Despite forking out a massive R200m on digital infrastructure and equipment since 2021, the Eastern Cape Health Department’s roll-out of the technology has been marred by poor planning and lack of staff training.
The project is being implemented in two phases in 32 healthcare centres targeting highly litigated facilities that include Frere, Livingstone, Cecilia Makiwane, Bhisho and Grey hospitals, reports Daily Dispatch.
Equipment includes laptops and printers, while the department also bought computer servers worth R45m as part of the roll-out plan, which aimed to create electronic medical records for patients, daily management of their medical history, as well as management of medico-legal records.
A priority was installing computerised equipment to ensure that hospitals could successful migrate from a “paper-based environment to an electronic environment”.
But a lack of training, as well as other issues, have impeded the project, and thus far, there appears to have been little success in the transition.
United Nurses Trade Union of South Africa (Untusa) provincial chair Linamandla Malindi said they were told about the programme last year.
“In 2022, they informed us that patients’ records were going to be digitised and that the department was doing away with hard copies of patients’ folders.
“Our initial concern was that nurses were not fully trained on the use of technology devices, and the other was that during load shedding, facilities with no backup generators would struggle when there was no power.
“The project has not made a difference because even with the technology and devices that were bought, some are not operating at full capacity, due to lack of maintenance and upgrades. And we have not yet moved to a paperless environment.”
And Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA provincial chair Sivuyile Mange said: “We fully support the initiative because the department is bleeding severely from litigation due to poor recording.
“But the province is mainly rural, with infrastructure backlogs, and the issue of connectivity remains a big challenge in most facilities.”
Daily Dispatch PressReader article – Glitches in migration to digital hospital records (Open access)
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