Order of Physicians “demands explanations over health system’s IT collapse”

Portugal’s ‘Ordem dos Médicos’ (Order of Physicians) is demanding urgent explanations regarding the glitch that affected the SNS national health service’s IT systems on Friday and left as many as 150,000 consultations and medical procedures unrecorded in real time.

Following the “significant disruptions” which continued to affect the system on Saturday, the Ordem has requested clarification from the Ministry of Health’s Shared Services (SMPS), expressing regret that it has not been contacted “in a timely manner by this body” already.

“An immediate institutional communication should have been essential to inform and support doctors, protect patients and ensure that professionals knew how to respond to this specific problem,” said the Order’s president, Carlos Cortes, quoted in a statement, adding that “it is nonetheless strange and worrying that the SMPS have not contacted the Ordem dos Médicos to this day”, considering “this withholding of information is incomprehensible”.

The OM stresses that “the failures affected healthcare facilities across the country, restricted access to clinical information and compromised the performance of essential care procedures”.

In light of this, it is “essential to ascertain, with rigour and transparency, what happened, the specific causes, the systems affected, how long they were unavailable, and what measures were taken to ensure the continuity of clinical activity and patient safety”, says the statement.

The Order estimates that more than 150,000 consultations and scheduled clinical procedures were not recorded in real time.

“Many consultations did not take place or were postponed, with a direct impact on patients’ access to healthcare, the quality of medical decision-making and the organisation of work,” it adds, noting that this was, in fact the “second (such) serious failure” in less than a month: “On May 22, a security breach affected administrative data and information associated with clinical records of more than 100,000 patients across the country, including children”.

The Order also requested urgent clarification from the SPMS regarding that IT failing, but says it still hasn’t received any kind of response.

This raises concerns about the resilience of critical systems, the protection of patients’ data, public confidence and the safety of medical decision-making.

“When IT systems fail, doctors are left without access to essential data, such as medical history, regular medication, allergies, tests, prescriptions for medicines and tests, referrals and information relevant to the continuity of care. This increases clinical risk and forces professionals to make decisions under suboptimal conditions,” says the statement.

The Order believes there must be clear contingency plans, tested and known to professionals, with simple clinical and operational guidelines, alternative routes, referral procedures and access to essential information, as well as secure procedures for recording and subsequently validating the actions taken.

In the letter addressed to the SPMS, Carlos Cortes also requested clarification on existing redundancy systems and on the project for the second central infrastructure hub of the SPMS, which was announced to strengthen the resilience of critical systems.

“Patient safety, continuity of care, the protection of clinical data and doctors’ working conditions require clear, rapid and transparent information. They are incompatible with any practice of omitting or concealing relevant information,” he stressed.

Source: LUSA