Selayang Hospital’s IT system down for three days and counting

 

Medical staff at the Selayang Hospital have had to access patient's records manually for the last three days after the failure of its IT system, leading to  further slowdowns in an already overloaded operation.

Two sources working at the hospital confirmed the matter with Malaysiakini, saying that the IT system called Powerchart has been down since Jan 6.

"It's a system we use to record everything we have done, including patient history and their progress in the hospital."

"Every lab investigation, CT scans, reports will be recorded in the Powerchart so when the system is down, we can't access previous records and this includes blood reports," said a source.

"Normally, to take blood supply you just order it in the system, now you need to fill in a form for every blood request and send it to the lab," they added.

The change definitely added an extra level of workload to an already busy hospital at a time when the healthcare system is being heavily strained due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

While Selayang is not a Covid-19-specific hospital, Covid-19 cases are arriving in all hospitals now, and if they cannot be transferred to Sungai Buloh Hospital, then they will be stuck at hospitals like Selayang too.

"Now if a patient comes to us, we have no idea what the previous report said, unless the patient has brought their own copy," said the source.

They told Malaysiakini that this is not the first time that Powerchart has ceased to function but that on the previous occasion, the situation was resolved more quickly.

Attempts to get a response from Selayang Hospital and the Selangor Health Department director Dr Shaari Ngadima have thus far been unsuccessful.

Last month, health news website CodeBlue reported that at least two operation theatre staff nurses at Selayang Hospital were infected after contact with an infected patient.

The website reported that the nurses only wear face masks while attending to patients if the patients test negative with the initial Antigen rapid test (RTK Antigen) kit.

Results are derived faster using RTK Antigen, but it is less sensitive in detecting Covid-19 and has a higher chance of producing false negatives, compared to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. - Mkini