Fears Dunedin Hospital's ground-breaking electronic prescribing pilot might not be extended across the hospital because of a lack of funding may be unfounded.
Concern was expressed at the Southern District Health Board's hospitals' advisory committee meeting last week that the new system could stall because there was no future Ministry of Health funding for it and the board could not afford it.
However, the board's recently appointed medical director of information and clinical leader of the pilot, Dr Andrew Bowers said the National Health IT Board had indicated it might fund the extension of the programme.
This would be discussed in greater detail during the coming weeks.
The IT board had also indicated it should be able to support interim funding while other arrangements were made.
"This is an excellent development."
The ministry-funded pilot, the only one of its type in the country, had a budget of more than $640,000 and involved two Dunedin Hospital medical wards last year.
Extending it to the rest of Dunedin Hospital and Wakari Hospital would cost about $800,000 for computer hardware as well as salary costs for a pharmacist, and technical and training staff.
In his report to Dunedin Hospital's clinical board, Dr Bowers said the pilot had exposed some "very suboptimal prescribing and administration practices".
The rule that there must be a second signature for opiates and intravenous medications was infrequently followed.
Enforcing this with an inflexible and auditable electronic system meant total compliance, but this had not always been popular.
The Ministry of Health advised the Otago Daily Times the Health Quality and Safety Commission and the National Health Board were willing to provide additional funding for programmes such as e-prescribing, subject to the evaluation of the pilots.
A ministry spokesman said it was "very interested in the benefits that are coming across from early findings in the Otago pilot, such as reducing medication error and leading to cost savings in the hospital system".
Dr Bowers said although funding was essential and savings were likely to be realised with the investment, it was important to understand the issue was one primarily of quality improvement.
"The cost of harm to a person should never be reduced to purely monetary terms, as the real cost lies in the adverse impact on their lives and the harm to our whole community. This cost cannot be measured, " he said.
