The antiquated physical folder system in health facilities is back in hospitals. The Lightwave Health Information Management System (LHIMS) is non-functional and the frustration emanating from the situation is telling. The fallout is not only stressing patients it is said to have extended to hospital personnel who have resorted to the backbreaking manual system of yesteryears. The tracking of disease trends by officers responsible for this important function has been stopped as a result.
The hospitals and government for that matter are losing revenues and patients’ health situations aggravated. Although the situation commenced over a fortnight ago the past week has witnessed the situation infecting all other public health facilities across the country. When situations such as this rear their heads the public is left with no option than to speculate.
The question being posed also is whether or not government wants to replace the service provider with another one hence the shutdown of the existing system? So far the only reason from the authorities for the situation is that an auditing of the system is being undertaken. This gives credence to the speculation that the current service provider is being edged out as the replacement of the trusted LHIMS which has served the healthcare system since the introduction of digitization in healthcare management becomes imminent. The bottom-line in the foregone is that the administration of healthcare is leaving patients especially those on the lower rungs of the social ladder to suffer avoidably.
The National Health Insurance Scheme was introduced to especially bring healthcare to the doorsteps of the people and affordably so.
Should there be any need to alter aspects of healthcare delivery this should not in any way impact negatively the status quo.
Unfortunately that is the unwanted situation being endured by patients some of who unpreparedly had to face the reality of paying for services they should not have been paying. Couldn’t the auditing of the system been done without such massive interruption of information technology to obviate the countrywide stalling of healthcare delivery? Of course that could have been done but someone does not want it so and would prefer such a shutdown to facilitate the planned replacement of the software and perhaps the engagement of a new information technology service provider.
It is time we as a country take another look at the replacement of systems when new governments take over the helm. Should we demonise the systems introduced by previous governments and replace same only for these to face similar fates in future?
These are challenges we should look at so we can get close to perfecting existing systems.
In matters of health governments must avoid the usual politicization of issues because lives lost cannot be replaced.
