First we have had the overt political threat to the EPAS.
SA-Best wants EPAS investigated as Xenophon releases health policies
Nick Xenophon is calling for an immediate pause and investigation into the controversial electronic health records system EPAS, among a series of brief SA-Best health policy proposals released this morning.
Bension Siebert @Bension1
The Enterprise Patient Administration System was designed to replace paper with electronic records in public hospitals and health care settings across South Australia, and has been credited with reducing the frequency of medication errors.
However, doctors have repeatedly warned that the system slows down emergency care, threatens patient safety and blows out waiting lists.
Xenophon says he believes e-health records system had caused “too many near-misses” and needed to be investigated.
“Very serious concerns have been expressed about major operational flaws that risk lives,” Xenophon said in a statement.
“Medical and IT professionals alike have questioned whether the EPAS is fit-for-purpose – or indeed, workable at all.
“SA-Best has serious concerns that the EPAS is failing, and if so, it is failing sick South Australians that so vitally need it to function properly.”
He said the party wanted proof the system was safe and functional.
“From what we are hearing, there have been too many near-misses with EPAS,” said Xenophon.
“Until we have definitive proof the system is operating at 100 per cent functionality, it should be paused and reviewed pending a thorough investigation.”
InDaily last year revealed the cost of the program had blown out from its latest budget by almost $50 million, to $471 million.
“The other concern we have with EPAS is that South Australian taxpayers have already spent over $470 million on EPAS – we need to make sure we are not continuing to throw good money after bad.”
Lots more here:
There is further coverage here:
Xenophon calls for SA’s EPAS to be paused and investigated after complaints from doctors and “near misses”
Lynne Minion | 09 Feb 2018
Former senator turned state party leader Nick Xenophon has called for use of SA Health’s beleaguered Enterprise Patient Administration System to be paused, claiming an investigation into the electronic health record used throughout public hospitals and health care providers was required.
Releasing his SA-Best party’s health policies today, Xenophon said concerns had been raised by clinicians about the safety and functionality of the platform.
“Very serious concerns have been expressed about major operational flaws that risk lives,” Xenophon said in a statement, according to InDaily.
“Medical and IT professionals alike have questioned whether the EPAS is fit-for-purpose – or indeed, workable at all.”
Heaps more here:
Releasing his SA-Best party’s health policies today, Xenophon said concerns had been raised by clinicians about the safety and functionality of the platform.
“Very serious concerns have been expressed about major operational flaws that risk lives,” Xenophon said in a statement, according to InDaily.
“Medical and IT professionals alike have questioned whether the EPAS is fit-for-purpose – or indeed, workable at all.”
Heaps more here:
And to top it off – with an election looming we have this getting national coverage:
Two separate glitches blacked out Royal Adelaide hospital
- The Australian
- 10:08PM February 8, 2018
Andrew Burrell
Parts of the Royal Adelaide Hospital lost power for almost 20 minutes because of two separate software glitches, it has been revealed, as the body that runs the facility admitted it gave inaccurate advice to the state government.
It also emerged today that a technician testing the back-up generators at the $2.4 billion hospital failed to stop the test despite an alarm showing insufficient levels in a fuel tank — and this mistake may have contributed to Wednesday’s’s blackout.
South Australian Health Minister Peter Malinauskas said he was “incredibly disappointed” that Celsus, the body responsible for the RAH, had initially given him inaccurate information about the causes of the blackout.
“I have no reason to believe they deliberately provided us with misleading information,” he said, adding the government had sent in its own engineers to work with Celsus to investigate the outage. In his original explanation, Mr Malinauskas said a generator had been working for four hours before it was switched off, which is when a software glitch caused the blackout. But late on Thursday he said the generator stopped working after just 2 ½ into the four-hour test due to low fuel levels.
“Someone should have been aware of the low fuel levels and cancelled the test,” Mr Malinauskas said. Celsus chairman James Bramley said in a statement that the consortium had provided “inaccurate and incomplete” advice to SA Health on the outage.
“We advised that following regular maintenance of a generator, the software that controls which electricity source is used did not transfer power from the generator back to mains power, leading to an outage,” he said.
Mr Bramley said further investigations revealed there were, in fact, two software faults. “We believe the pump that feeds fuel from the main tank into the smaller day tank that powers the generator did not function as it should have. Because of this, the day tank had insufficient fuel to complete the four-hour maintenance test and automatically switched to return to mains power after 2.52 hours of testing. The second software fault occurred at this point, with the generator unable to return to mains power, resulting in the outage.”
More here:
All one can say it that health – and health IT – will be front and centre at the upcoming election.
Certainly there seems to be more than one contingency plan that needs a close look!
David.
"Doctors have repeatedly warned that EPAS slows down emergency care, threatens patient safety and blows out waiting lists."
ReplyDeletemyhr won't replace any of this, all it will do is add to the chaos.
What parallel universe is ADHA living in? Cloud cuckoo land?