It Seems A Few Issues Are Emerging In The SA Public Hospital Program.

This arrived today:

12/166, 21 December 2012

DELAY IN COMPLETION OF THE EPAS DESIGN AND BUILD PHASE

The Enterprise Patient Administration System (EPAS) Program is one of the largest South Australian health care reforms ever undertaken in terms of its scale and impact.

The new EPAS system consists of several modules – Clinical Manager, Records Manager, Registration, Patient Flow, Scheduling, Patient Administration and Billing.

On Thursday 20 December 2012, the EPAS Program Board received notification from the vendor Allscripts, that there will be a delay in the delivery of some critical elements of the Billing Module. These elements are required to ensure the system is suitable for Australian financial needs, such as processing Medicare and Health Fund Claims.

While all of the remaining modules for EPAS have been designed and tested, all elements of the Billing Module are required to be completed for end to end acceptance testing to ensure the new system operates as it should prior to ‘Go Live’ at the first site.

As a result of this notification, the EPAS Program’s Design and Build phase will now be delayed for a minimum of two months, while the EPAS Program Office undertakes a risk assessment on Allscripts’ proposed timeframes to deliver the final elements of the Billing module.

Consequently a new Site Activation Schedule with updated Go Live dates for each hospital and health care site will be released in January 2013.

The EPAS Program Board is committed to ensuring that the Noarlunga Hospital, Noarlunga GP Plus Super Clinic, and the Repatriation General Hospital will remain the first sites to go live with EPAS.

For more information, please visit the EPAS Intranet site.


DAVID SWAN
Chief Executive

On the assumption that this is not a hoax...as we have seen with ANZ/Whitehaven/The Greenies... then this issue is worth keeping an eye on.

Thanks to anon for the contribution.

Here is an initial link on the project.

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com.au/2010/11/sa-health-takes-risky-path-recently.html


David.