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You hear of our hospital staff being stretched to the limits, operations going wrong with  patients going home with sponges and other medical equipment left in them and patients dying because of lack of care.
The government is funding billions and billions dollars to try and improve Australian hospitals, but no matter what they can’t get more nurses, resulting in overworked hospital staff.
With some more thought, more planning & better communication with our hospital staff, we could build the best medical system in the world, or, if not, have a hospital system thats no better then a house-fire. 
Our governments met and arranged over 43 billion dollars to be injected into our dying medical systems within the next 5 years.
While its obvious we need new staff, and better conditions for our hardworking nurses and doctors, maybe some thought should be put into reaching the bottom of the situation instead of covering it up with more staff.
Australia in 2006 gave a negative opinion about the Australian Access Smart card, which was designed to hold your personal identification number, that could be linked to a database system.
The debate was a big brother like situation would form, leaving our citizens watched and the government knowing each of our moves. Which is a reasonable response really, since who would like a stalker?
But, put that into a medical perspective, and you could increase productivity and even higher the chances of survival over death.
Imagine this, your rushed into hospital, unconscious and bleeding to death. Your blood is tested, while other tests are run and 15 minutes later your receiving the blood you desperately need before being wheeled into theatre.
Or, your rushed into hospital, unconscious and bleeding to death. Your smart card is swiped, and instantly the nurse knows your blood type and also that your allergic to a drug they were just about to give you. Your wheeled into theatre in 2 minutes, with more informed hospital staff.
If some central database was setup, your doctors appointments, medical history etc could be accessed by our nurses within seconds reducing valuable time contacting doctors, sampling and doing other tests.
Then you can see the privacy issues that are related with that, but, if the database is centralized, the owner of the information could login, and delete or change privacy settings that would limit certain information being shown from the comfort of their home.
For a relatively simple exercise, we could reduce time & increase our hospitals productivity by not wasting our nurses valuable time doing pointless tests to find information that already exists. 
Could be the difference between life and death.