Cuts worry system minders

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

Information technology staff at the Auckland District Health Board are worried proposed job cuts threaten the future of a $3.1 million computerised patient record system.

The system, which records details of patient and treatment history, was delivered for $400,000 under budget, and is expected to save the board $700,00 a year by increasing the efficiency of 700 mental and community health users.

It enables visiting nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and psychiatric staff to enter records of treatments on laptops.

The records are then consolidated in a central database.

But sources in the board's IT department said proposed redundancies could mean the system would grind to a halt if qualified staff were not available to maintain it.

"It's like anything - if you don't put oil into a car it's going to run for a certain amount of time, but then it will stop and no amount of oil you put in will make it run again," said an IT manager.

Auckland District Health spokeswoman Brenda Saunders said a restructuring plan being considered included redundancies across the organisation, but she could not say whether the information services department would be affected.

Under the plan, some jobs would be changed and others abolished, but details would not be known until the end of next month.



"Nothing specific has been mooted yet, it's still in the consultation phase," Ms Saunders said.

Miguel Hamber, information services manager for Community, Ambulatory and Mental Health Services, said business units had been told that the system would not be affected by organisational changes.

But he said the system would require regular maintenance to keep it working efficiently.

Mr Hamber said 70 to 80 per cent of healthcare costs were personnel- related, so any improvement in staff efficiency would result in considerable savings.

The business case for the system had estimated that each clinician would be able to make an average of one extra patient visit a day, which was an efficiency improvement of 10 per cent or more.

The previous system had stored patient and treatment records across 26 different computer databases and on paper files.

"Rather than people chasing paper files that might be in different parts of the city, they are now available centrally in electronic form, and there is no need to have your colleagues on the end of a phone all the time," Mr Hamber said.

The software component of the system, which was developed in association with Auckland-based Intra Health Systems, took the lion's share of the project costs.

But Mr Hamber said around $500,000 had been spent on 155 laptop computers.,