A Nova Scotia family is questioning the expansion of One Person One Record after saying lost ultrasound referrals preceded their baby’s death.
A Nova Scotia family is asking for clearer answers before the province expands its new electronic medical records system Saturday to hospitals across the Halifax-area central zone.
Cassidy Horne, from Ostrea Lake, was about four weeks from her due date when her daughter, Arabella, died in January. Her family says Horne and her doctor had been worried for weeks that the baby had stopped growing, and that at least two ultrasound referrals sent to the IWK Health Centre were later described by hospital staff as lost during the switch to the new system.
The family says it still does not know whether the One Person One Record system played any role in what happened. Dr. Krista Jangaard, president and CEO of the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, told CBC she could not discuss Horne’s case or other specific patient situations because of confidentiality rules, but said she was not aware of any serious patient harms since the system launched at the children’s hospital in December.
“Do I believe there have been any significant patient harms over the last five months? No,” Jangaard said. Asked whether any deaths were connected to OPOR, she again said no.
The $365-million system is intended to combine more than 80 workflows for patient information, from lab records to food service requests, into one platform as it is implemented across Nova Scotia. The IWK was the first hospital in the province to move to OPOR. The next rollout is scheduled for all hospitals in the central zone, including the Halifax area, the Eastern Shore and West Hants.
Horne’s family says the timing makes the unanswered questions more urgent. After Arabella’s death, Health Minister Michelle Thompson promised an investigation. The family was interviewed by the hospital after speaking publicly in March, but says it has not received an update since.
Concerns about the rollout have also been raised by health-care workers and unions. The Nova Scotia Government and General Employees Union has called for Nova Scotia Health to delay the expansion, citing a survey of 260 IWK workers in which 58 reported direct harm to patients and 188 reported delays in care.
CBC also obtained, through a freedom of information request, a redacted letter from an IWK physician to the health minister and Nova Scotia Health CEO Karen Oldfield. The letter, sent two days before Arabella died, said several prenatal ultrasound requisitions had been lost and that some patients received ultrasounds later than recommended. “This is not acceptable,” the doctor wrote.
Janet Hazelton, president of the Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union, said her members have concerns about the system, though she said they are being addressed as well as possible. She described the first four to six weeks after the IWK transition as “really concerning,” but said there has since been “a tremendous amount of positive progress.”
Jangaard said some documentation had not been easy to find or had been misdirected, but said those issues have been changed and fixed. For Horne’s family, the central question remains whether the province should press ahead before explaining what happened to the referrals and what safeguards are now in place.
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