Enterprise Patient Administration System

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Health. Can the minister update the house about the activation of EPAS at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital?

The Hon. J.J. SNELLING (Playford—Minister for Health, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Health Industries) (14:53): I thank the member for Colton for his interest in this. Last Wednesday, SA Health's Enterprise Patient Administration System (or EPAS) was activated at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This is the third metropolitan hospital it's been brought into, as it already is in use at the Repat and Noarlunga. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is now the biggest hospital using EPAS, and I am delighted to say its activation there has been a success.

This morning, I visited The Queen Liz and spoke to doctors, nurses and other staff who are now using EPAS for patient management. They are pleased to have an electronic system at their fingertips, which they described as being both logical and efficient, instead of having to use paper records. There are many benefits to this system which staff are already seeing:

quicker access to patient information;

reducing the chance of prescription errors because EPAS has a built-in alert system; and

allowing doctors and nurses to spend more face-to-face time with patients.

I can't overestimate the importance of being able to order investigations, treatments and documents for patient history electronically, because we know that it saves lives. Already, less than a week after the most recent EPAS activation, the staff at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital emergency department told me about a patient who presented who already had a record on EPAS because of presentations at a different hospital.

The patient's health record was found within seconds because it had already been entered onto the system. There was no need to make a phone call to another place to get someone to dig into an office, or a filing cabinet—no need—and send that information from one place to another, no precious time wasted. This is just one of the many ways that EPAS improves patient safety.

I am very grateful to the EPAS team and everyone in both the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network and the Central Adelaide Local Health Network, who have been working diligently and enthusiastically to make this latest activation possible: doctors, nurses, administrators, and allied health staff, I should add as well. I am also pleased that despite a campaign of misinformation that's been conducted by a noisy minority, dedicated and professional staff have been getting on with the job of continuing to improve and modernise South Australia's health system.

The SPEAKER: The campaign in the federal division of Port Adelaide wasn't overly successful. The member for Reynell.