Lakes DHB's computer system back online

Patients at Rotorua Hospital should still expect delays even though the computer system is up and running again. Photo/File

The Lakes District Health Board's computer network system is back up and running after a fire at Rotorua Hospital caused a major outage earlier this week.

However, staff are only able to view the two main patient management systems, and further outages are anticipated. The full recovery from the outage is expected to take months.

Paper-based, manual systems are still being used, until all the clinical data from this week can be entered into the system.

The manual systems of recording patient information will continue until the data has been entered.

Incident controller Gary Lees, who is the director of nursing and midwifery, said staff had been warned there could still be failures in the system, and that there was a great deal of work to be done to fully restore the network and patient management systems.

He said a number of key pieces of work were being advanced as part of achieving this permanent, robust solution.

Mr Lees said the full recovery was expected to take "some months".

"We continue to move quite cautiously as while our systems are all working, we are realistic about the possibility of further failures in the systems."

Planning for the recovery phase is under way.

The fire early on Monday in the DHB's main computer server room on the Rotorua Hospital site caused a major outage affecting computer and patient management systems, along with email and internet access for three full days.

Rotorua and Taupo Hospitals and the DHB's community services reverted to manual systems, and patients were warned to expect delays.

Chief executive Ron Dunham said the last few days had been difficult and he was proud of how all staff had worked to ensure patients were safe and cared for during the outage.

He said they were grateful for the strong support and help from neighbouring district health boards, service providers and primary care, during the outage.