Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Friday, September 02, 2016

It Seems We Have Had A Rather Bad Run Of Luck With Health Systems Recently.

I noted two major outages reported this week.
First we had this:

System crash causes chaos at Monash Health's emergency wards

By Allie Coyne on Aug 22, 2016 1:00PM

Staff forced to resort to manual lists.

Monash Health's emergency departments were thrown into chaos over the weekend after its electronic patient management system fell over throughout Friday and Saturday.
Hospital staff were forced to resort to manual paper lists to keep tabs on who had entered the department and for what ailment, with some patients forced to wait as much as 12 hours to be treated.
Monash Health implemented the "Symphony" electronic patient administration system across its three emergency departments - Monash Medical Centre Clayton, Dandenong Hospital, and Casey Hospital - during 2008-09.
Symphony is a product made by healthcare systems vendor Emis Health. 
The system handled 206,602 patients passing through the three emergency departments in the year ended June 30 2015.
More here:
And then – as mentioned last week we had this:

Computer system glitch puts thousands of NT patients at risk

  • The Australian
  • 11:34AM August 25, 2016

Amos Aikman

Thousands of Northern Territory patients have been put at risk by a major failure of a crucial computer system that transmits information between hospitals and remote clinics.
The NT Department of Health has established a crisis management team to urgently investigate the glitch, believed to have prevented as many as 5400 referrals and other pieces of information concerning about 2400 patients from reaching their intended destinations.
The problem was discovered by accident last Friday, but may have gone unnoticed for as long as 18 months from 2014 till May this year, when sources said it had been fixed “by accident”.
The failure to transmit patient information only came to light when a clinician rang up to see why his patient’s records had not gone through. The problem is understood to have affected clinics Territory wide, including prisons and some alcohol rehabilitation centres.
The Australian has been told most of the 2400 patients affected are unlikely to have suffered serious health consequences because their ailments were minor or their information was transmitted separately via other means.
Lots more here:
I have to say it is not often we have two major outages in a week. Seems things go on for a while without getting fixed!
I wonder what will go down this week?
David.

No comments: