This amazing yarn appeared a few days ago.
Exclusive: 'Inappropriate' email reveals Queensland Health's ploy to avoid political scrutiny of hospital IT outages
6:30pm Oct 31, 2019
Government decides against Queensland health upgrade
Damning emails have revealed a government plan appearing to prioritise politics over the care of Queensland hospital patients.
Messages and emails obtained by 9News prove Queensland Health staff were ordered not to perform vital upgrades to critical digital hospital systems during parliamentary sitting weeks – when government ministers or the Premier would be forced to answer questions.
Queensland's digital hospital and IT systems have been a recurring headache for the government following hundreds of millions of dollars in budget blowouts; medical supply companies going unpaid due to technical glitches; and state-wide outages of the digital hospital system.
Planned upgrades to the systems are designed to improve patient safety and health services. However, at times the upgrades have caused the outages.
A directive by the Queensland Health Director-General, Dr John Wakefield, and E-Health CEO Damien Green was emailed to staff last week informing them of the new protocol.
"I received the below from the ODG and CEO," the email from the state's Chief Technology Officer says.
"Can you please make sure that all application planned changes are captured and that teams understand they cannot implement changes that fit the criteria I described in my follow up email today.
"We may need to stop those that are earmarked to go ahead from today if they meet the criteria.
"From now on, DG need a week's notice and these changes can't be during parliament sitting weeks. I'm getting latest info from CE's office on those dates and will forward to you."
Other emails show the order relates to all E-Health's digital hospital systems used by doctors and hospital staff, some storing patients' records.
Senior Queensland Health staff have told 9News the order to reschedule upgrades would avoid system crashes at a time ministers or the premier would be forced to answer questions on the floor of parliament.
Lots more here:
The Age / Brisbane Times then summarized an annus horribilus in Qld.
Queensland Health's troubled year of bungles, crashes and crises
By Lucy Stone and Stuart Layt
October 31, 2019 — 9.32pm
Revelations that Queensland Health staff were asked not to perform critical IT updates during upcoming parliamentary weeks have capped a turbulent year for the department.
On Thursday Health Minister Steven Miles denied he had any knowledge of an internal government letter that told staff not to go ahead with planned updates during parliament’s sitting weeks.
The key IT project, an ambitious rollout expected to see the ieMR [integrated electronic Medical Record] implemented in nearly all public hospitals before 2025, had been hit with concerns from clinicians for months.
In January, a Brisbane Times investigation revealed senior clinicians had been fighting for months behind the scenes to raise their fears about patient safety after a series of blunders was revealed.
The Health Department and the minister have repeatedly insisted the ieMR is improving patient safety and hospital performance.
But that same month, the head of the sub-department responsible for Health’s IT systems, eHealth Queensland, resigned.
Dr Richard Ashby had championed the ieMR through his tenure in the department, leading the installation at the Princess Alexandra Hospital first.
Then-director-general Michael Walsh announced on January 31 that Dr Ashby had resigned and allegations had been referred to the Crime and Corruption Commission.
Read the full – very long – list of messes here:
One can only be amazed at how good this lot are as shooting their own feet!
David.
No comments:
Post a Comment