Just to prove New South Wales is not alone in feeling the pain of a single digital patient record rollout, here’s some news from our Scandinavian friends.
What happens when you spend billions on a health records system that fails in usability? You spend more, apparently.
Recently, the Norwegian Parliament voted on the future of Helseplattformen (HP) (Epic EHR), meant to modernise and connect healthcare records.
The budget started at 3 billion NOK (about $450,372,000 Australian). It is now expected to exceed 15 billion NOK ($2.251bn).
With continuous discussions online and in news outlets, the politicians voted to keep Epic (50-50 vote).
[It has a] usability score of 17 out of 100. Other systems in Norway score 58. Everything below 40 is failing.
Eight out of 10 doctors are dissatisfied (although the numbers are improving). Ninety percent of clinicians saying they spend more admin time than before. The national audit office flagged patient safety risks. Doctors are reporting medication errors.
And this is what frustrates me. Patients and clinicians should have something to say in which tools are used, however, it doesn’t seem like the Parliament considered the patient or the clinician.
The Epic system was built for the American healthcare system. While HP’s [Epic’s] goal was to connect health records across hospitals and municipalities. Different workflows. Different standards. Different care models. Different data.
When the bidding [for the contract] was [opened], only Epic was “big enough” to join the bidding. The Norwegian alternative, covering 85% of Norway, was “too small” to join.
The rollout was supposed to come in phases. But it ended up with a big bang – full rollout all at once; without training material ready.
Compared to the system that was built for Norwegian healthcare, users of HP need hours and hours of training to understand the system.
Those who are [in favour of] continuing the project say that user complaints have declined. I wonder why. Do users feel they are heard? Have they started working somewhere else? Or has the system become better? They also say it is too expensive to stop the project.
The ones who want to stop the project say the discontinuation of the project is less expensive. The Norwegian alternative is far cheaper.
In the end, the biggest argument is about the money already spent vs every person who has used the system.
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A doctor who recently changed jobs, called not working with Epic anymore “breaking free from the chains”. He went from calling IT several times a week to a system that was intuitive.
That’s cost nobody seems to be counting. And [what’s the cost of] clinicians spending more time on admin than on the patient?
Parliament chose the investment over people it should serve, [which] sounds like saving face while the boat is sinking, and someone’s pocket getting deeper.
This isn’t just Norway. It happens too often – tools being chosen without input, nor listening to clinician or patient feedback. Patients hardly have a seat at the table, but are impacted by the decision.
If this is how we protect patient and clinician safety and well-being, no wonder people are complaining about healthcare.
Sigrid Berge van Rooijen is a health AI consultant and innovation orchestrator based in the Netherlands. She is also on the editorial board of Telehealth and Medicine Today.
This article was first published on Ms van Rooijen’s LinkedIn feed. Read the original article here.