Maternity system required remedial work at time of baby’s death

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eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Issues with the electronic Maternity Clinical Information System in use at Palmerston North Hospital in 2015 have surfaced during a coroner’s inquest into the death of a baby girl.

MidCentral District Health Board says it has since worked with the Ministry of Health and the vendor, Clevermed, to remedy issues with the system and improve its performance in the New Zealand health system.

Charlotte Harding was born at the hospital on 11 August 2015, but died 10 hours later. A coronial inquest into her death was held last month.

It heard that a doctor had booked a caesarean for the mother because of the baby’s poor condition, but this was cancelled by a consulting obstetrician, who decided to proceed with a vaginal birth.

Media reports of the inquest say the consultant, who has name suppression, did not have access to the patient’s files because the new electronic record-keeping system was not working properly.

The consultant said he would have acted differently if he had known about the mother’s previous delivery, which did not go well, but he did not have easy access to the notes due to the move to a computerised system.

MidCentral DHB was an early adopter of the Ministry of Health’s IT health board roll-out of the electronic MCIS, also known as Badgernet, into maternity units.

The system went live first at the Horowhenua Health Centre, then at Palmerston North Hospital, in October 2014.

MidCentral DHB operations executive for healthy women, children and youth Sarah Fenwick said the system was functioning at the time of baby Charlotte’s death, “but required a large amount of remedial work to ensure it was fit for the New Zealand maternity system”.

Examples of the issues experienced at the time involved staff having problems working out where to enter information, and when trying to extract meaningful information, she explained.

There were also issues with finding patient risk data and with the quality of discharge summaries.

“The same system is currently being used following extensive support and a concerted effort by the staff within MidCentral, alongside the Ministry of Health and the vendor, to remedy the aforementioned issues and continually improve the programme,” Fenwick said.

If you would like to provide feedback on this news story please contact the editor Rebecca McBeth.

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