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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
The Hospital Authority (HA) today (September 30) announced a computer system printing error event.
During a routine system check of the Laboratory Information System conducted last week, the HA Information Technology (IT) Department discovered a system setting error made during the system upgrade last December. The Laboratory Information System has not printed the anatomical pathology results of patients automatically upon completion of each test according to the request of a clinical unit.
The clinical unit concerned is the Medicine & Geriatrics (M&G) Specialist Outpatient Department of Tuen Mun Hospital. According to the standard practice of clinical consultation, doctors will access the electronic patient records (ePR) of patients for immediate input of the consultation record, while referring to the patients' previous medical history, including pathology reports. In addition, the M&G department will also print a weekly summary of the pathology reports to review all the anatomical pathology results of the tests conducted during the week to ensure proper follow-up of all the reports.
Upon notification of the printing error event, the M&G department, as a precautionary measure, immediately reviewed the ePR of the 822 unprinted reports. It was ascertained that 812 of the reports had been accessed for browsing in the ePR indicating that the doctors had acknowledged the pathology test results. For the remaining 10 reports which have not been accessed in the ePR, the M&G department has reviewed the medical records and pathology results of patients to confirm that care of the patients is proper and without any delay.
The HA is very concerned about the event. The IT Department has conducted a comprehensive review of all the settings of the Laboratory Information System, in particular the printing programmes. All the programmes are currently running normally. The IT Department will continue to investigate the event and has immediately enhanced the routine checking of the Laboratory Information System to ensure that clinical department requests are met to facilitate timely patient care.
Ends/Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Issued at HKT 17:49
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