Radiologists are so concerned at the failure of an IT system at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital they have warned the Weatherill Labor Government ‘inevitably there will be a patient death as a result’.
The Chair of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists (RANZCR) has told SA Health the legacy Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) is experiencing multiple and escalating system failure issues.
These include incorrect images being displayed and system failure during report dictation which is not evident to the reporting radiologists.
“The RANZCR reports that this leads to permanent loss of critical patient information and increased risk to patients when significant health records are not recorded within an acceptable timeframe, lost or not acted on,” said Shadow Health Minister Rob Lucas.
“It has now been revealed that one of the first decisions taken by Premier Weatherill’s Health Minister, Jack Snelling, was to stop the replacement of this system at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital with a new system called Enterprise System for Medical Imaging (ESMI).
“The implementation of ESMI had been approved by SA Health and the former Minister for Health, but Mr Snelling reduced the scope of ESMI to just the Women’s and Children’s Hospital and not to other hospitals including The Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
“It is clear the buck stops with Premier Weatherill’s Health Minister Snelling, who must now reveal publicly what he is going to do to ensure patient safety at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and other hospitals like the Lyell McEwin Hospital, which has the same legacy system.”