The objective is that healthcare identifiers for individuals and providers will be used as part of a national electronic health records system to improve safety for patients and increase efficiency for healthcare providers.

The Healthcare Identifiers Service will be operated by Medicare Australia.

Its functions include:

• assigning, collecting and maintaining identifiers for individuals, individual healthcare providers and organisations by using information already held by Medicare Australia for its existing functions;
• collecting information from individuals and other data sources;
• developing and maintaining mechanisms for users to access their own records and correct or update details;
• using and disclosing healthcare identifiers and associated personal information,for the purposes of operating the Healthcare Identifiers Service; and
• disclosing healthcare identifiers for other purposes set out in the Act.

The Act sets out the permitted purposes for which healthcare identifiers may be used or disclosed and the offences relating to the misuse of healthcare identifiers and penalties for breaches of the legislation.

The Federal Privacy Commissioner will provide independent regulation of how healthcare identifiers are handled and the operation of the Healthcare Identifiers Service. This will include handling complaints against Medicare Australia.

• Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives (Medicare Levy Surcharge - Fringe Benefits) Bill 2009 [No. 2]
• Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives (Medicare Levy Surcharge) Bill 2009 [No. 2]
• Fairer Private Health Insurance Incentives Bill 2009 [No. 2]

The Explanatory Memoranda are here, here and here.

UPDATE: The Bills were defeated by a majority vote in the Senate on 24 February 2010.

The Commissioner formed the view that the health service provider had interfered with the complainant’s privacy by listing a payment default when it was not a credit provider in respect of the debt. In response to the complainant’s claim that the payment default prevented them from obtaining finance, the health service provider apologised, removed the payment default, and ceased its practice of reporting overdue accounts to a credit reporting agency. The complainant also accepted a confidential financial settlement.

It allows for the conditional listing of prostheses in the Private Health Insurance (Prostheses) Rules (Prostheses Rules) and requires the Minister for Health and Ageing to make rules specifying criteria for listing prostheses in the Prostheses Rules.

The Parliamentary Library has published a digest of the Bill here.

The new Rules commence on 1 January 2010.

The Governance Standards are set out in Schedule 1.