The overflowing patient records' room at Limassol general hospital pictured on Wednesday
PICTURES of the patient record filing room at Limassol General Hospital published on Thursday told a depressing story. Shelves jam-packed with pink files, boxes overflowing with files on tables, counters and the floor and more loose files piled on top of the shelves. There is no way that any patient’s medical records could be found in this chaotic mess, which the visiting Akel delegation described as a symbol of the crumbling health system.
It is also a symbol of the general incompetence and inflexibility of the public sector, which remains stuck in the 1980s and ’90s in terms of organisation and work practices. It is difficult to believe that in the year 2018 public hospitals are operating as if computers had not yet been invented, still using paper for patient records. The patient files may as well have been sent for recycling considering they are not archived and impossible to retrieve when needed. A clerk would probably need three days to find the file of a single patient.
A few weeks ago, several angry patients invaded the filing room to find their files, which they were told by hospital staff could not be located. According to a health ministry official, many files had not been archived because of staff shortages. Of course, the inability to use medical records, which makes the job of a doctor much more difficult, would not have existed if electronic records existed at public hospitals.
Nothing has been done about electronic records because the issue would have been tackled as part of the introduction of the national health system (Gesy). A bill on e-health was submitted to the legislature in April and it envisages keeping the medical records of patients in a database, accessible via an individual’s health card. But even if the bill is approved today, it will be introduced when the Gesy is ready in two, three or five years.
What happens in the meantime? Should patients accept that when they go to for treatment to Limassol General Hospital the doctor will give them a diagnosis without having seen their medical records? And are patients expected to tolerate this unacceptable situation, which puts them at serious medical risk, until the introduction of Gesy that could take years?
There is a very simple solution to the problem. The health ministry should send 10 clerks to Limassol hospital to put the files in alphabetical order and hire three full-time clerks to work in the filing room, storing and retrieving files. It is such an obvious and simple solution, but our public service is so monumentally inefficient and inflexible it could take months if not years to fix the problem.
https://cyprus-mail.com/2018/06/01/our- ... -shameful/
