LESS than 3 per cent of Australians have signed up for eHealth records in the year since its launch despite a major push for registrations.
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The Government's $1 billion eHealth system reached 647,431 patient users on Tuesday. Of those 35,769 were from the ACT.
The most populous state, NSW, topped the tally with 202,677 registrations while the Northern Territory had the fewest with 12,816. But according to the Department of Health and Ageing by Friday registrations jumped to 665,328, an increase of almost 18,000.
In the ACT, a Health Directorate spokesman said people were assigned to register Canberrans entering the hospital.
''We do not have any information in relation to the costs associated with this,'' the spokesman said.
''They were assigned by the Commonwealth and funded to assist consumers to register for the national eHealth record.''
A further four staff employed on a part-time basis for a period of eight weeks specifically targeted patient admissions. This exercise was funded by the National eHealth Transition Authority.
The Department of Health and Ageing refused to release the cost of sending bureaucrats to hospitals to encourage patients to sign up for health records but about 12 specially trained staff have been deployed in hospitals, community clinics and aged care homes in Tasmania and the ACT to sign patients up to the scheme.
''The only advertising expenditure from the Department of Health and Ageing for the personally controlled electronic health records (eHealth records) system, has been as part of the recent Medicare for All communication campaign, which informed Australians about services that make Medicare more accessible, including the after hours GP Helpline, the eHealth record and Medicare Locals,'' a Department of Health spokeswoman said.
ACT Public servants have also been called upon to boost numbers with information about signing up to the national eHealth record sent to Health Directorate staff in May.
But Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton has questioned the added expense and the system.
Dr Hambleton said most of those records would be unused and blank because GPs and hospitals could not easily access and enter information in the system.
