Hospital IT crash a mystery, says boss of CUH
Tony McNamara has conceded that they need to find out quickly — “because clearly the potential implication of a system going down where so many tests are done each year, is significant”.
Minutes of a breast cancer governance meeting at the hospital from August 28, seen by the Irish Examiner, state that “these problems were highlighted four years ago”.
CUH has already advised GPs in the region that it cannot stand over some test results and the State Claims Agency has been put on notice of potential fallout. The CUH IT system also serves Kerry General Hospital, Bantry General Hospital, and Mallow General and the blood transfusion lab at Mercy University Hospital.
Yesterday, it emerged staff in the hospital also have concerns about missing patient files. The minutes of the same breast governance meeting state: “System failure from August 13 will corrupt files and loss of data on ? 300 patients.”
One staff member told the Irish Examiner the IT crash created a “huge added workload” “because we can’t get the records for patients... we have to go back and check the records from the week when the crisis first started”.
The ongoing crisis — the IT system failed again this week — was discussed yesterday at a meeting of the hospital’s executive management board.
Mr McNamara said it was a “routine” meeting and denied any patient files had been lost due to the IT failure. He also denied that any clinics or surgeries faced cancellation as a result of missing test results, although one hospital worker said: “If you don’t know a person’s blood group, how can they go for surgery?”
Minutes from the breast governance meeting recorded that: “It will take four to six weeks for pathology to verify reports and put them back on the system. Not clear what will happen those patients whose data is lost.”
At the HSE South regional health forum yesterday, in response to questions from Cork City GP Dr John Sheehan, who is also a Fianna Fáil councillor, Mr McNamara said the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) had failed five times since January, including this week.
He said the “symptom of the failure” was that they “get corruption on the database which renders the system unusable” and that the reason it became “such a catastrophic event” was because the recovery process failed and this left the HSE “with a number of very difficult choices in relation to how to proceed”.
It has taken “longer than it should have” Mr McNamara said to agree a recovery procedure.
Dr Sheehan said as far as he was aware it was the biggest IT failure in the history of CUH and that he was concerned €400,000 was being spent on a new server “when the problem with the old one has not been identified”.
Mr McNamara said a four-person team has been set up to do a “root cause analysis” and are due to report back in eight weeks.
