Who will be responsible for assigning IHIs?
A national Healthcare Identifiers Service (HI Service) is being established to assign and maintain healthcare identifiers. Medicare Australia will be the initial operator of the HI Service. As a trusted government authority, Medicare has the national infrastructure, as well as the industry and community relationships needed to securely deliver and maintain the healthcare identifiers. The HI Service will be a separate and new Medicare Australia function, not linked to its funding or claims for payment functions. As a statutory agency, Medicare Australia is governed by national legislation that sets out the scope of the functions it can perform and the privacy and security it must maintain for the personal information it holds.
