The LBJ Hospital CEO and Chief Medical Officer say doctors should have continued treating patients Saturday when the electronic medical records system for LBJ stopped working.
Patients in the Emergency Room alerted KHJ News That none of the doctors were seeing patients for a few hours Saturday because they couldn’t access patient records, when the system went down.
CEO Faumuina John Faumuina said the failure was due to a problem with the wiring and this has been fixed.
He said there was no reason why doctors in the ER stopped seeing patients; they should have continued working and do what they normally do on the system manually.
Chief Medical Officer Dr Iotamo Saleapaga agreed. He told KHJ News that patients’ symptoms help doctors determine their treatment. He said any medicine prescribed to treat the symptoms can be manually written and this should have been done on Saturday. “The people are right with their complaints,” said Dr Saleapaga.
About the failure of the electronic medical records system, Dr Saleapaga said this is the first time since it was installed that the whole system failed and was out for a few hours. He said it appears that the wiring needs to be replaced.
Patients reported Saturday morning that when the system went down, doctors on duty sat in their rooms and stopped seeing patients.
