As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, March 7, 2011
THE computer system that runs emergency departments in NSW hospitals is compromising patients’ care, according to the first systematic review of the troubled project that found it was crippled by design flaws.
The FirstNet system allows treatment details and test results to be assigned inadvertently to the wrong patient, according to the review. It is based on a technical study of the software and interviews with directors of seven Sydney emergency departments.
The system is so compromised it should be scrapped, a specialist doctors’ group said yesterday.
Difficulties retrieving patient records could delay treatment, and the system – on which $115 million has been spent – automatically cancelled pathology and radiology requests if the person was transferred from the emergency department without checking whether these were still needed, according to the study by Jon Patrick, the director of the University of Sydney’s health information technology research laboratory.
