Did you know that one million Australians had their medical history automatically uploaded onto the Internet last month – were you one of them?

If you live in northern Queensland or the Nepean Blue Mountains in NSW, then it’s very likely. It’s where the Federal Government rolled out its $51 million opt-out trials for its troubled My Health Record system.

Only 1.9% of participants chose to opt out of the scheme. The system allows patient information to be accessed by doctors, hospitals and healthcare providers.

The result? Over 970,000 new My Health Records in June, and the information online since mid-July.

The Government says the rate was “in line with international experience with opt-out systems for electronic health records.” But really, how many people are going to bother opting out?

$1 billion down the drain

It’s easy to see why the Government is keen on its new opt-out system.

Launched by Labor in 2012 as the opt-in Personally Controlled E-Health Record (PCEHR), the ‘opt-in scheme failed monumentally. It cost an eye-watering $1 billion – but after three years, just 2.2 million, or 10% of the population had “opted in”.

Rather than dump it, the new Coalition government announced in the 2015-16 budget it would spend a further $485 million to transition to an opt-out model.

Since its re-launch on July 1, the number of people with a Record has now gone past 4 million, or 17% of the population.

This is good news for the Government, with the trials’ success making it almost a certainty the opt-out system will be adopted for the rest of the country.

But what will you be “opting in” for?

With fears about data security and privacy still high after the disastrous 2016 Census, here is yet another system that would be a prime target for hackers or potential abuse by employers and health insurance providers.

The Government has introduced harsher penalties for misuse of the data, including fines of up to $540,000 or two years’ imprisonment. That’s not exactly a vote of confidence in their own security, is it?

They’ve also appointed HealthConsult to develop a ‘Framework for Secondary Use of My Health Record System Data’. Under the My Health Records Act 2012 (the Act), your information can be collected, used and disclosed “for any purpose for research and public health purposes.” What does that mean for your data?

They also bill the Record as putting patients in control. But you can also choose to hide or exclude parts of your history, for example, details of abortions, mental health or STD’s. But this would make it difficult for doctors to rely on.

Doctors lose out on incentives

Patients aren’t the only ones being forced to use the system. The Department of Health itself estimated in April that only 798 providers had uploaded a health summary.

They are aiming to fix this. From May, doctors are required to upload health summaries to five patient records every three months or risk losing a $60,000 e-health payment.

An Australian Medical Association survey showed doctors estimate the penalties will cost them an average of $23,400 in lost payments a year.

There’s also no guarantee that every health professional will upload their patient’s data or that the information given will be complete, something the Record’s own website warns.

Minister for Health Sussan Ley says the system will save $2.5 billion year within a decade, but can the Government guarantee the safety of our information – or that it will even be accurate?