Source: Radio New Zealand
The latest issues follow at least four major IT outages at public hospitals last month. RNZ
Doctors and nurses at South Island hospitals have been struggling with clinical documents not being displayed or not being saved.
Health NZ on Monday issued a critical priority notice about service degradation of its electronic clinical record system that the South uses.
The notice at 12.30pm was resolved just after 4pm.
RNZ was told the example of a doctor losing some patient discharge summaries that they then had to recall and do again.
Someone familiar with the situation said the doctor talked about “the devastation of how much information has been lost that he has to re enter [and] time for which he does not have”.
“It’s all very well to have plans, intentions and work-around but when this is a daily issue it becomes very difficult, demoralising and dangerous. Who’s to say this House Officer is going to recall all that needs to go into the discharge summaries when he gets back to them?”
Health NZ has been approached for comment.
‘Fixing longstanding issues’
This follows at least four major IToutages at public hospitals last month.
In some, clinicians lost access to patient records that tracked medication and lab results.
Health NZ’s acting chief information officer Darren Douglass recently wrote to staff that “we are investing more than $200 million this year in essential upgrades to our core digital infrastructure and the systems people rely on”.
That would include replacing outdated hardware and “fixing longstanding issues that have built up over time”.
The $200m was from existing expenditure made up of depreciation funded investments (for example, lifecycle replacements and upgrades) and Crown expenditure (the drawdown of the balance of funding allocations from Budget 2021, 2022, and 2025), Health NZ said.
In 2024 about $300m was cut from its data and digital spending and scores of jobs.
‘The impact can be serious and immediate’
An internal memo about trying to improve the response when IT failed said, “when something fails, especially at scale, the impact can be serious and immediate: disrupting care, delaying treatment, or stalling vital work”.
Health NZ has repeatedly told the public it had workarounds and plans to protect patient care during outages.
It also said three of the four outages in January involved outside vendors, and it was working with them to speed up the response.
This had echoes internally, according to the memo late last month with reference to clinicians having trouble calling for IT help:
“Digital Services has listened to your feedback that it’s not always clear what to do, navigating support channels can be confusing, and response times have been lengthy.
“We’ve made changes to how incidents are prioritised, managed, and communicated.”
Work was going on to speed up the IT service desk response from three minutes to under two, set up a single 0800 number for the service desk, and put out a user guide so staff would know “what channels should you use”.
Health NZ told RNZ last week it was moving from regional IT service desks to a national model so support was clearer and more consistent.
It also said, “When there is a significant IT incident, our priority is restoring services safely and supporting clinical teams to continue care.
“We have established response and escalation processes in place, and we draw on expertise from across the country and our vendors to resolve issues as quickly as possible. Patient safety remains the central focus throughout.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
