My Health Record Sharing by Default in 2026: How Clinics Handle the Surge in Results, Recalls and Privacy Admin

From 1 July 2026, pathology and diagnostic imaging results must be shared to My Health Record by default under the Modernising My Health Record (Sharing by Default) Act 2025. Where patients previously had to opt in, results now share by default. Patients or providers can opt out, but the system no longer requires active consent for each upload.

For continuity of care, this is a meaningful shift. A treating specialist, an emergency department, or a GP covering for an absent colleague can now access recent pathology results without chasing the ordering practice. That is the policy intent.

The operational consequence for clinics is a change in volume and pattern. More results flowing into more systems means more inbox items to review, more recalls to generate, more patient notifications to manage, and more privacy-related queries to handle. For practices that have a structured results management process, this is manageable. For those that currently rely on an informal or GP-driven results flow, it will require deliberate redesign.

What Changes in the Results Flow

Before 1 July, results arriving in a clinic’s inbox from pathology and imaging providers were coming through established channels — primarily through PMS integrations, fax, or secure messaging — and landing with the ordering clinician or a shared clinical inbox. My Health Record visibility was a secondary layer.

After 1 July, the default upload means that results are visible in My Health Record as a matter of routine, which creates two new administrative obligations.

Patient notification and privacy management. Patients who were unaware their results would appear in My Health Record, or who have specific concerns about visibility, need to be informed of their options. Practices will receive queries from patients who have noticed results in their health record before speaking with their GP, or who want to understand the opt-out process. Managing those queries through a defined front-desk or admin protocol keeps them out of the GP’s inbox and ensures patients get a consistent, accurate response.

The clinical obligation to review, act on, and document results remains unchanged. The change is in patient behaviour: patients who see their results in My Health Record before the practice contacts them are more likely to call in for context, creating a category of inbound patient contact that practices need a protocol to manage.

The Ongoing Results Administration Tasks

Setting aside the clinical review itself — which remains with the GP or treating clinician — the following administrative tasks around results management are amenable to structured delegation.

Initial results categorisation. When results arrive in the practice inbox, an initial sort separates routine results from those flagged outside reference ranges. A trained admin team member working to a clear protocol can perform this categorisation and route results appropriately: urgent results directly to the GP, routine results to a patient notification queue, and unclear results to a clinical review queue. The admin team member routes based on system flags and reference range markers, with all clinical interpretation staying with the GP.

Routine recall generation. For results that indicate a follow-up appointment is needed, but where the GP’s review has confirmed the follow-up is non-urgent, generating the recall and booking the appointment is an administrative task. The admin team member creates the recall in the PMS, sends the patient communication, and records the outreach and response.

Patient notification for routine results. In practices that notify patients of routine normal results, this is a high-volume, low-complexity task: a templated message sent via the patient’s preferred channel (SMS, patient portal message, or letter), logged in the PMS, with a response queue for patients who reply with questions or concerns.

My Health Record privacy query management. Patient queries about what is visible in their My Health Record, how to access opt-out options, or why a result appeared before their GP called them are administrative queries that can be handled by a trained admin team member with a clear script and an escalation path for queries that have a clinical dimension.

Logging and audit trail maintenance. Every results action — from receipt to notification to follow-up — should be logged in the PMS with the action taken and the date. A remote admin team member can own the audit trail for routine results, ensuring the log is complete and that any gaps in the sequence are flagged before they become compliance issues.

Building a Safe Results Coordination Workflow

The clinical risk in results management sits at the point of clinical review and clinical decision-making. The administrative risk sits at the points where results could be missed, misrouted, or not actioned in the timeframe the practice’s protocol requires.

A safe results coordination workflow has three features.

Clear categorisation rules. The protocol for initial categorisation must be specific enough that a trained admin team member can apply it consistently without clinical judgement. Reference range flags, result type categories, and urgency markers need to be defined in writing, with examples. Ambiguous results go to the clinical review queue automatically.

Defined turnaround standards. The protocol should state how quickly each category of result needs to be actioned: urgent results within two hours of receipt, routine results within 24 hours, and so on. Turnaround tracking makes the standard visible and surfaces delays before they create clinical risk.

A daily handover between admin and clinical. At the end of each day, the results queue should be reviewed jointly: what came in, what was actioned, what is pending, and what is waiting for clinical input. This keeps the clinical team informed and in control without adding inbox management to their workload.

Where HIPPO Fits

A results coordination role — combining inbox triage, recall generation, patient notification, and audit trail maintenance — is a well-defined, high-value task set for an offshore admin specialist in a general practice or specialist clinic.

HIPPO has placed admin specialists into Australian health practices operating inside clinical PMS environments, with structured access, clear escalation protocols, and information governance arrangements built before Day 1. If you want to design a results coordination role for your practice, a Connect Session is where that conversation starts.