Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

NSW eHealth agency established under department restructure

The agency, to be implemented by the year's end, will improve implementation of e-health projects and provide support to local districts and facilities

The NSW government has moved to restructure the Department of Health and has established a new agency, eHealth NSW, to reflect the growing role of technology in health provision.

According to NSW health minister, Jillian Skinner, the agency will drive innovation, improve implementation of electronic health initiatives and provide support to the local health Districts and their facilities.

The restructure has also resulted in the elimination of 200 middle management positions to free up more than $80 million for front-line services and provide better support for local health Districts.

“The new structure will provide greater transparency and accountability, duplication of tasks will be stopped and there will be greater clarity of roles and responsibilities,” Skinner said in a statement.

“The Department of Health will become the Ministry of Health, reduced in size and with a flatter structure as the local health networks have greater control.”

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has thrown its weight behind the restructure, labelling it “a step in the right direction”.

“The importance of local clinician engagement in decision-making over instructions being handed down from a centralised bureaucracy is something that we’ve been championing for some time,” AMA NSW president, Michael Steiner, said in a statement.

“Changing the role of the Health Department to a more hands-off one and moving away from a culture of micro-management of hospitals by a centralised bureaucracy shows that the NSW Government has listened to what doctors and other health professionals have been saying for several years.

According to Steiner, giving local health districts more responsibility will enable them to improve services to their regions and encourage clinicians to get more involved in decision making.

“Giving greater responsibility to the Clinical Education and Training Institute, the Clinical Excellence Commission and the Agency for Clinical Innovation and removing duplication with the Health Department is also a move in the right direction,” he said.

US-based IT services provider CSC, which recently acquired Health IT company iSOFT for $178 million, also welcomed the move.

“No longer is IT a backoffice function as this structure demonstrates that technology is a necessary part of a modern, safe and quality healthcare system that is fundamental to healthcare service delivery,” a CSC spokesperson said in a statement.

Follow Chloe Herrick on Twitter: @chloe_CW

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: AMA, Australian Medical Association, CSC, Department of Health, NSW Government, OFT
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: AMA, csc, ehealth, iSOFT, NSW governemnt
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Best Practices for Secure Enterprise Content Mobility
    To secure mobile devices while enabling employees to share data securely, organisations need a comprehensive and flexible solution for secure enterprise content mobility. A secure enterprise content mobility solution complements Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions and enables mobile workers to easily share data with other authorised users, while ensuring that data is always secure and IT operations are always compliant. Read this whitepaper to learn: How the popularity of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is creating new security challenges; Why MDM is useful, but not sufficient; How enterprise content mobility provides an essential layer of security and control for organisations with mobile users.
    Learn more »
  • Oracle Exadata - Extreme performance, lowest cost.
    As organizations contend with escalating demands for greater quantities of information, more sophisticated data analysis, and a burgeoning user population, Oracle Exadata makes database workloads faster, easier to manage, and less expensive. Oracle Exadata is the world’s first database machine to provide extreme performance for both data warehousing and online transaction processing (OLTP) applications. Read this whitepaper.
    Learn more »
  • Think print, Think security - Plugging the printer security gap
    The widespread use of networked printers and multifunction peripherals (MFPs) which scan, print, fax, copy and email has increased productivity in the production of all types of business output. However, the growing sophistication of these devices has also increased security risks associated with printing. Network connectivity, along with hard disk and memory storage, means that MFPs are now susceptible to many of the same security risks as PCs and servers alongside the traditional risk of sensitive printed output getting into the wrong hands. However, all too often the security of the print environment is overlooked and little is done to mitigate these threats. Read more.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments