Source: Radio New Zealand
MediMap is used by some health providers in aged care, disability, hospice and the community to accurately record medication doses and pharmacists say it going offline has caused “significant disruption”. RNZ/Calvin Samuel
Pharmacies are falling back on their emergency back-up plans to distribute medication, and doing a lot of unpaid leg-work in the process, following the MediMap hack.
The prescription portal is used by many aged care, disability, and hospice providers to track medication, but it’s been offline since Sunday when it was discovered patient information had been changed – details like names, dates of birth, allergies, even marked some patients as deceased.
For nurses in care homes, MediMap going offline had meant a return to pen and paper, meaning it was taking a lot longer to get things done.
The same is true for pharmacists.
James Westbury, owner of Westbury Pharmacy and Unichem Kilbirnie Pharmacy in Wellington, said they supported about 5000 people in aged care, hospice and supported housing.
He said it had been “incredibly difficult” and caused “significant disruption” – with the digital system offline, pharmacists had downed tools to get a new manual system underway.
That involved going back through people’s dispensing histories and charts to make sure they were up to date, and in many cases, getting extra sign-off from a prescriber to be able to dispense medication.
“Unfortunately pharmacies get paid on dispensing, and when you’re not dispensing you’re not making money, so at the moment this is all done for the love of patient safety.”
Was it posing a risk to patient care? He said it added complexity, but it was manageable.
“The systems that we’ve got in place at the moment, I feel quite comfortable that care will be maintained at a safe level, particularly for regular prescribed and PRN [meaning, as needed] medication,” he said.
“The only real concern is where it’s short course [prescriptions] where it’s a little bit more difficult. We can still produce the data to provide safe continuity of care, it’s just a lot more challenging to get that information out – but it’s the art of the possible.”
Pharmacists had been forced to get a new manual system underway due to MediMap being offline. 123RF
Westbury said communication from MediMap had been “appalling”.
Pharmacists had been assured there was a digital backup in place should MediMap fail, called MediMap Go, he said. But that appeared to have been affected by the same hack, and was also offline, leaving pharmacists to scramble a new system into place.
Kesh Naidoo-Rauf, president of the Pharmacy Guild, said members were coping, but it had come at a bad time.
“We’re already struggling and facing workforce pressures, so it couldn’t have come at a worse time for the sector, in all honesty.”
But the priority was patient safety.
“We are trained for exactly these types of situations, so we’ve got our strong checks and balances in place to maintain safe dispensing processes. So it is still safe, but it is a lot slower.”
MediMap has declined multiple interviews with RNZ, but on Wednesday put out a statement saying it was heading to court to seek an injunction to stop anyone accessing, using, copying or sharing information from its systems.
It’s still unclear how many people have been caught up in the breach.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
