SA Health review: EPAS must be overhauled or scrapped Adam...

SA Health review: EPAS must be overhauled or scrapped
Adam Langenberg, Political reporter, The Advertiser
September 26, 2018 6:26pm
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• Survey finds EPAS “unfit for purpose”
• Government halts EPAS rollout
• Herczeg inquest: Coroner blasts SA Health’s EPAS over death
• Doctors label EPAS a dud

THE health system’s trouble-plagued electronic patient record system will be overhauled or scrapped altogether, after an SA Health review “confirmed” concerns about its operation.

Three health experts will determine if issues with the electronic patient administration system (EPAS) can be “addressed adequately” after a review found it couldn’t proceed in its current form.

SA Health chief executive Chris McGowan said the panel would also consider whether the problems were so significant that EPAS needs to be scrapped entirely.

“The independent expert panel will now look at options regarding the future of the EPAS roll out and will be consulting with stakeholders on the options,” SA Health chief executive Chris McGowan said.

“The expert panel needs to determine if the issues raised with EPAS can be addressed adequately in order for it to meet the expectations of users in the future.”

Dr McGowan ruled out returning to a paper record system.

SA Health’s expert panel will look at four options for changing or replacing EPAS. Picture: iStock
The four options that will be considered by the expert panel are:

CONTINUING with a significantly modified EPAS

ROLLING out the modified EPAS in the Central and Southern local health networks, before assessing requirements for other health networks

OBTAINING a “fit-for-purpose” patient administration system and pairing it with an electronic medial record

SCRAPPING any further rollout of EPAS and returning to the market for a new solution

The Government honoured its election commitment by stopping the rollout of EPAS in March and commissioning the review.

Health Minister Stephen Wade said the diagnostic review “vindicates longstanding concerns”.

“I look forward to the taskforce’s final review and the implementation of an electronic records system that works for clinicians and is safe for patients,” he said.

Opposition health spokesman Chris Picton said any move to scrap EPAS and start again would have an “enormous cost to taxpayers”.

“To justify this expense he (Mr Wade) needs to be able to guarantee his new system won’t have any problems or pose any risk to patients”.

The initial review diagnosing the system’s flaws will not be released until the three-member expert panel has recommended a preferred way forward in a second report, expected to be completed by the end of November.

The EPAS rollout was years overdue and more than double its planned budget when Mr Wade halted it.

It has cost taxpayers $471 million so far.

An Australian Medical Association survey last year found the system was “unfit for purpose” and “dangerous”.

State Coroner Mark Johns also has condemned EPAS for “effectively preventing the court from establishing the truth” in his inquiry into the death of former Socceroo Stephen Herczeg, 72, who died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in 2016, where lack of paper records was an issue.