More than 2.5 million Australians have opted out of My Health Record

From zdnet.com

The figure is almost bang-on with 10 percent expectations the Health Minister has previously expressed.

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The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) has finally updated the number of Australians that have chosen to not use the nation’s My Health Record system, telling Senate Estimates on Wednesday the figure now stood at a touch over 2.5 million.

“90 percent of Australian Medicare users have not opted out,” Deputy Secretary of Health Systems Policy and Primary Care at the Department of Health Caroline Edwards said.

Using what ADHA CEO Tim Kelsey labelled a conservative metric, the number of Medicare card users in Australia, and potentially total My Health Record users, at January 31 was just under 25.5 million.

The only prior update on how the number of opt-outs was tracking was in October when ADHA said 1.1 million people had opted out.

Earlier this week, the Department of Health disclosed that by mid-November, almost 300,000 Australians had removed themselves from the My Health Record system and cancelled their existing electronic medical record.

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