Surgeons say they are glad the South Australian Government is putting on hold a rollout of its electronic patient records system.
The Enterprise Patient Administration System (EPAS) has cost more than $400 million so far but only been implemented in a few of the state’s hospitals.
The aim had been to give ready access to a patient’s records across the health system.
The medical records system used bedside computers to record patients’ information and treatment details.
Royal Australian College of Surgeons chairman Peter Subramaniam says using an electronic system is desirable but EPAS has not been functioning properly.
“It’s not an intuitive system,” he said.
“An example would be it takes five clicks to actually start a single episode.
“If you spend a few minutes talking to the patient getting a history, because of privacy issues it logs off automatically so that means that the data entry is lost.”