One of the sites involved in the federal government’s e-health project (also known as the personally controlled electronic health record system or PCEHR) announced a further delay of six weeks in the project prior to live implementation due to the government’s decision to stop work at the initial sites testing the system’s components. 

In a Senate inquiry scrutinizing the e-health project legislation, Metro North Brisbane Medicare Local chief executive Abbe Anderson said that her site would now allow live testing of shared health summaries in the middle of March 2012 and not January 30, 2012 as originally announced.

Earlier, National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) told the ten of 12 implementation sites on January 19, 2012 to halt work due to compatibility issues between versions of the specifications given to the sites November 2011.

No affected software went into live testing with actual customers, but a report suggested that NEHTA informed the affected sites’ heads of a "potential clinical risk" of live implementation while the compatibility issues remained unsolved. 

The first three sites selected for live-testing PCEHR components in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland after a one-year preparation intend to sign up tens of thousands of customers before the July 1, 2012 deadline set for the PCEHR. 

NEHTA and the Department of Health and Ageing had the original plan of completing systems implementation and testing at all 12 wave sites by April 2012, but the wave sites are now expected to resume within the next few months, thus pressuring the government to meet the deadline it has stated.

An updated transition contract yet to be signed by the sites will oversee each site’s implementation work as it moves to the national infrastructure being stood up by an Accenture-led group of vendors.

Inner Melbourne East Medicare Local’s director of e-health and business strategy Adam McLeod said that the site would be “ready to go,” save for any “significant changes that come out” of the compatibility problem.