The good folk at the AONSW want to know what’s going on inside the SDPR rollout. Tell them.
NSW Health, and its agencies eHealth NSW and the SDPRIA, have spent years telling us what its billion-dollar-plus Single Digital Patient Record will do.
Now might be a good time to ask how we’ll know whether it actually did what it’s promised to do.
I’m not talking about whether Epic went live on time, or whether clinicians could log in, or whether another local health district successfully survived its first day after go-live.
I’m talking about whether healthcare in NSW is demonstrably better because taxpayers spent close to $2 billion changing the system.
The Audit Office of NSW has already had one go at the SDPR. Back in November 2025 an audit of state agencies found that the SDPR project business case was inaccurate.
“The initial business case did not include all relevant project costs, and estimated operational costs lacked sufficient or reliable evidence,” said the report.
“The project business case … [failed] … to include the costs of integrating the SDPR with legacy systems. The estimate for implementation-related expenses for in-scope health entities was not supported by robust documentation due to limited cost information available at the time.”
That November 2025 report promised another audit to “assess the efficiency and effectiveness of the procurement, governance and project management of the SDPR project”.
The time has come for that audit to begin and that presents the staff of the SDPR Implementation Authority with the perfect opportunity to bring into the light the shortcomings of the implementation that they have been telling us about for months.
Submissions are now open for the audit, with a deadline of 6pm on Friday 4 December. Submissions will be kept completely confidential with nothing published on either the AONSW’s office or in the subsequent report.
“If we use extracts of a contribution, we will not identify the source in the report,” says the audit webpage.
“We will not share feedback provided to us with any other organisation or person outside of the Audit Office, and we will not publish feedback (including formal submissions) in our reports or on our website.”
In other words, this is a chance for SDPRIA employees to be completely frank and forthcoming.
This week, former CEO Dr Teresa Anderson – safely on leave and away from the public eye – announced her immediate retirement.
Our sources say that brought some relief to workers on the SDPRIA frontline, but there are still problems – big problems.
HSD has been told that even though the next deadline – the SDPR go-live at Northern Beaches Hospital – is not until late November, staff have been instructed to complete the work within the next two weeks.
According to our sources, the deadline has been set because a senior manager is due to go on leave and wants the work completed before then.
Is that a realistic deadline? Not even close, according to our sources.
Today, Bill Vargas, former CIO of the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, submitted a comment on our article about Dr Anderson’s departure, that provides some valuable insights.
“From my own experience at SCHN, in 2017 we demonstrated the technical feasibility of allowing an authorised clinician to access another LHD’s detailed electronic medical record from within the patient context,” Mr Vargas wrote.
“This used HealtheNet and statewide identity and authentication capabilities. It could have provided a useful interim improvement, but it was not progressed as planning for the SDPR was already under way.
“This history reinforces the need for NSW Health to explain clearly what additional value the SDPR is now delivering.
“As the timetable is reconsidered, I would welcome HSD asking NSW Health to publish measurable benefits against the pre-SDPR baseline.
“These should include clinical safety, clinician time, administrative burden, system usability, patient experience, workforce wellbeing, adoption, unresolved incidents and the cost of implementation and ongoing operation.”
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Mr Vargas also had some sensible warnings for what may be ahead for the SDPRIA.
“Reconsidering the rollout schedule appears prudent,” he wrote.
“A staged approach may reduce risk and enable lessons from earlier implementations to be applied, but only if it is supported by realistic planning, sufficient resources, recovery time between go-lives and honest readiness assessments. Staging alone will not resolve underlying capacity or cultural problems and could create additional demands through repeated implementation and hypercare periods.
“Northern Beaches Hospital may provide a manageable next step, but the transition of established Cerner sites will be an important test.
“Their greater digital maturity may reduce some challenges, but it may create others. Clinicians accustomed to mature electronic workflows will reasonably expect the SDPR to deliver a demonstrably better user experience and meaningful clinical and operational benefits – not merely a different system.”
Food for thought there.
And yes, Bill, we will be asking those questions of NSW Health. Not that they ever answer us, but you never know your luck in the big city, right?
The AONSW will have plenty of things to measure – workforce exhaustion, psychosocial risk, implementation burden, abandoned rollout assumptions, staging, Northern Beaches, eventually the Cerner sites, implementation and ongoing operating costs, legacy integration, clinical incidents, clinician time, patient experience.
“Staff engagement, readiness and wellbeing are … fundamental to [the SDPR’s] success. The reported findings concerning psychosocial risk, emotional exhaustion and physical exhaustion should not be treated as secondary workforce matters; they represent significant program, clinical-safety and delivery risks,” said Mr Vargas.
“Addressing them requires demonstrable action, realistic workloads and genuine staff involvement – not simply reference to NSW Health’s CORE values of Collaboration, Openness, Respect and Empowerment.”
Mr Vargas said it best:
“The SDPR’s value proposition must also extend beyond providing ‘a full picture of a patient’s story in one place’.”
The bottom line is, if you work inside the SDPRIA, have lived through the rollout at Hunter New England LHD, are preparing for a coming tranche, or know what the program looks like from the clinical floor rather than the executive dashboard – here is your opportunity to help define what the NSW auditor-general should be looking at.
Have at it. Things can only get better, right?