Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Activity – Emergency Medicine Events Register (EMER)) Declaration 2025

Department of Health, Disability and Ageing

Contents

Part 1—Preliminary

1  Name

2  Commencement

3  Authority

4  Repeal

5  Schedule

Schedule 1—Description of quality assurance activity

1  Name of activity

2  Description of activity

Part 1—Preliminary

1  Name

This instrument is the Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Activity – Emergency Medicine Events Register (EMER)) Declaration 2025

2  Commencement

(1) Each provision of this instrument specified in column 1 of the table commences, or is taken to have commenced, in accordance with column 2 of the table. Any other statement in column 2 has effect according to its terms.

Note: This table relates only to the provisions of this instrument as originally made. It will not be amended to deal with any later amendments of this instrument.

(2) Any information in column 3 of the table is not part of this instrument. Information may be inserted in this column, or information in it may be edited, in any published version of this instrument.

3  Authority

This instrument is made under subsection 124X(1) of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

4  Repeal

This instrument is repealed when it ceases to be in force in accordance with subsection 124X(4) of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

5  Schedule

The quality assurance activity described in the Schedule to this declaration is, to the extent that the quality assurance activity relates to health services provided in Australia, declared to be a quality assurance activity to which Part VC of the Health Insurance Act 1973 applies.

Schedule 1—Description of quality assurance activity

1  Name of activity
 

Emergency Medicine Events Register (EMER)

2  Description of activity

This quality assurance activity is a clinical incident reporting system that captures information via a secure online website hosted at www.emer.org.au. The system provides for emergency medical practitioners, emergency medicine trainees and allied health professionals practising in Australia, as well as health care consumers, to enter incidents that resulted in an adverse outcome or 'near-miss' event. Participation in the database is voluntary, anonymous and confidential.

The EMER is conducted by the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM).

The data entered into the EMER is recorded in a database managed by ACEM. Users of the EMER provide information about incidents in response to close-ended and open-ended questions.

The data captured in the EMER is de-identified by a designated data custodian appointed by ACEM and is aggregated and analysed in detail to inform system improvements in emergency medicine practice in the following ways:

•          release of de-identified, aggregated information to members of the emergency medicine profession who request specific categories of EMER data for quality assurance research activities;

•          presentation of de-identified, aggregated results at state, national and international conferences, workshops and webinars that have an emergency medicine, patient safety and quality or other relevant focus;

•          presentation at events to promote EMER, including patient safety issues identified by EMER, learnings and corrective strategies;

•          publication on the ACEM website, in member newsletters and in research articles in scientific peer reviewed journals on de-identified, aggregated findings, learnings and corrective strategies; and

•          inform updates to ACEM's emergency medicine training program curricula, clinical practice policies and standards.