Records trauma at GCH
GOLD Coast Health’s attempt to save money by outsourcing patient records to typists in Asia has blown up in its face with medical staff unable to decode transcribed notes and the sick waiting weeks for proper treatment.
The city’s premier public health organisation has been forced to backflip on its decision to send administration duties to the Philippines and enlist a firm in Victoria to clean up the mess.
The Filipino office misinterpreted patient records, surgery notes, doctor’s advice, clinical appointments and changes to medication.
A source said patients were now waiting five times longer for their doctor’s certificates and left on outdated prescriptions.
“Because these letters are so far behind, six to eight weeks, they are going out to people who have died waiting for them unless the typists on the Gold Coast recognise the name and don’t send them.”
A GCH spokeswoman said the outsourcing to the Philippines and then Melbourne to cope with high demand was “short-term” and was now being done on the Gold Coast.
However, GCH had a meeting with typists on Monday afternoon to tell them outsourcing would stop immedi- ately — four days after Bulletin questions.
The spokeswoman said letters transcribed by the Melbourne company were sent to in-house transcribers and then checked by the clinician before being sent on to GPs.
“The health service made a short-term decision to partner with the National Transcription Service to help clear a backlog in medical letters.
“That backlog has reduced and all letters are now being transcribed by our medical transcriptionists. These arrangements are regularly reviewed to help ensure we meet clinical time frames and clinical demand.
“Gold Coast Health has experienced unprecedented demand for health care services in recent years and this has required strategic allocation of resources.”
Shadow Health Minister Ros Bates questioned why the transcripts were now being proofread by the same medical typists on the Gold Coast who transcribed them before they were sent offshore.
“What is the point of doing that? Why not get them to do it here in the first place,” she said.
“This is a waste of time and money. They should adequately resource the people on the ground here who can do the work. It is ludicrous.”
GOLD Coast Health’s experiment in sending patient records and other important material offshore for processing has shown the folly in outsourcing critical work.
The most important lesson – and did Gold Coast Health really need to learn this? – is that shortcuts or budget strategies should not be taken when patients’ lives are involved. Columns of figures should not take priority, a lesson for health departments, ministers and all governments.
Gold Coast Health says outsourcing was used to cope with high demand, but material is no longer being sent to the Philippines and instead is being transcribed in Australia and checked on the Gold Coast.
But why even use a Victorian firm when Gold Coast staff who transcribed this material previously are now having to proofread? There are too many instances across the public and private sectors of “great ideas’’ resulting in money then being used to patch up new problems. We understand that in this instance, there have been long delays and misinterpreted patient records, surgery notes and medication.
That should never happen.