Waitemata aborts oracle payroll roll out

By ADAM GIFFORD

Waitemata Health has aborted the roll-out of Oracle Payroll and is sticking for now with its existing system.

"The health sector is complicated because of the number of different collective contracts staff work under, and the system was struggling with all the intricacies," said hospital chief executive Dwayne Crombie.

"We are now in discussions with Oracle about what to do next."

He said payroll was the last module to be rolled out in a $4 million Oracle system, which also includes Financials, Human Resources and Procurement.

"The other modules are working fine. We are very happy with them, but we don't have enough confidence in Payroll to go live."

He said the hospital might need to upgrade its existing Leader payroll system, or it could wait for Oracle to get Payroll right.

"Oracle has sold it to the NHS (British National Health Service), so they have to get it working."

Crombie said Waitemata is already seeing benefit from the new Procurement module, with more than 90 per cent of purchasing being done online from electronic catalogues.

It has merged its procurement with South Auckland Health, giving it better economies of scale.

"We believe there needs to be alignment of IT across the Auckland health sector. We are just one big city," Crombie said.

Waitemata and Manukau have shared a chief information officer since January, when South Auckland CIO Phil Brimacombe stepped in to fill the vacancy at Waitemata created by the departure of Ray Delaney to the New Zealand Health Information System.

Both health boards have both adopted the same patient management system, PIMS from British firm Isoft, and are working towards running their systems on a single server.

Ascot private hospital also uses PIMS, and Auckland Healthcare is assessing it.