Even with the legislation surrounding the identifiers only passing late last week, the citizens of Australia will have Healthcare ID number from tomorrow.

Today, the Department of Health and Ageing has validated to ZDNet Australia, that an identifier will be handed over to every person by tomorrow, corresponding the Government's original 1 July roll-out date.

"It is planned that identifiers for individuals will be allocated within the Healthcare Identifier system (run by Medicare Australia) on 1 July 2010," the Department said.

Consumers are not required to do anything for this process. As part of the national professional listing procedure, health suppliers that are listed under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law will also be provided with the ID number in the Medicare-run system from tomorrow.

Once the process of allocating the ID numbers is complete, it is then up to the health providers to make a decision that how they will incorporate the numbers in their own organizations, if in case patients want to use the provided numbers.

According to the Department, to hold up the procedure, National E-Health Transition Authority is making an Implementation Plan for Healthcare Identifiers in close discussions with main stakeholders and has just accomplished public consultation on the draft Implementation Approach as part of the procedure.