Hospital staff still writing patient data with paper and pen after IT outage

Around 9.15am yesterday morning, the hospital experienced problems at its external data centre - responsible for running its online systems. Photo / George Heard

An ongoing IT outage at Christchurch Hospital means staff are still forced to record patient information with pens and paper and communicate by text.

The systems failure has now lasted more than 24 hours, Te Whatu Ora has confirmed, with efforts to fix the issue still ongoing.

Around 9.15am yesterday morning, the hospital experienced problems at its external data centre - responsible for running its online systems.

The “instability” at the data centre was caused by a switch fault, according to the health provider’s Incident Controller, Becky Hickmott.

As a result of the fault, inbound and outbound messaging within the hospital has been intermittent and forced outages on some of the hospital’s online applications.

The applications are used by frontline staff, such as nurses.

Inbound and outbound messaging within the hospital has been intermittent and forced outages on some of the hospital’s online applications. Photo / 123RF

Hickmott said staff have plans in place for the outages and are therefore following those contingencies. However, the contingencies mean staff are now using whiteboards, pens and paper to record patient information

Online prescriptions have now been moved to paper for the pharmacy, and staff now use Microsoft Teams and text messaging systems to communicate.

“Our teams are closely monitoring patient care,” Hickmott said when the outage was initially confirmed yesterday.

However, a later statement released by Te Whatu Ora on Thursday morning confirmed there were “no significant changes to report” with the outages.

“The teams are still working on a fix, and staff are still using manual systems,” the statement said.

This is the second day in a row that Te Whatu Ora has faced significant issues with its South Island hospitals after Dunedin Hospital was put under code red throughout Thursday.

It meant eight surgeries were deferred at the hospital due to a lack of beds available.