Patient safety and care is set to improve with nurses having access to electronic health records, according to the profession.

Patient safety and care is set to improve when nurses have access to electronic health records, according to the profession. From last month, every Australian was given an individual healthcare identification after the federal parliament passed legislation giving the scheme the green light. The automatically assigned 16-digit identifiers will store a patient's name, address and date of birth. They will allow the government to introduce electronic health records down the track, with $467 million set aside in the budget to roll out e-health records from mid-2012. Patients will be able to choose...