Page 3453 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 13 October 1993
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The committee has been involved in amending the draft regulations exploring the privacy / confidentiality implications, ensuring that appropriate provision is made for the education of the public and health workers, examining interstate models and various options for the operation of the register.
Naturally this consultative process has taken some time, but it is one that cannot be rushed especially when the outcome has such a crucial bearing on --he health of women of the ACT. Therefore the register will be fully operational as soon a. is practicable and not before the concerns and issues of the interested parties are taken into account. Specific concerns such as privacy will be dealt with by regulation.
Funding for the register is provided by the Government on the basis of a joint Commonwealth / Territory cost shared agreement. The register will be administered by ACT Health as part of the joint co-ordination unit which is also responsible for the administration of the ACT Breast Screening Clinic.
This arrangement has a considerable cost advantage in that by utilising an already existing g administration resource it avoids the duplication associated with establishing a separate service. The Government has investigated the possibility -r a non government agency running the register but has decided that the responsibility -for this initiative should lie with the Government. This is consistent with all states except NSW where an alternative model has not been demonstrably successful.
The information consolidated on the register in the vast majority of cases will deal
primarily with healthy pathology data relating to pap smears whereas a cancer register
will deal with information relating to all cancers irrespective of the--- site. Because the
data holdings of both registers serve two quite different purposes _: a not felt that there
would any cost or service advantage in the creation of a combine cervical, breast and
general cancer register.
Naturally information relating to cancer of the cervix held on the cervical cytology register will be a subset of the overall information held on the career register.
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