SA Health probes dashboard glitch but Labor’s Chris Picton says missing data pre-election ploy

SA Health says it has resolved an unknown system glitch that affected its website’s hospital dashboard displays – but Labor says the missing data might have been a pre-election ploy.

SA Health has resolved a previously unknown system glitch that affected its website’s hospital dashboard displays but a Labor MP has slammed the outage, labelling the timing as “very coincidental”

The department’s hospital dashboards were down on Tuesday morning with ambulance services, emergency department, inpatient, and elective surgery data all unavailable.

SA Health was initially unaware of the outage until notified by the Advertiser and estimated the dashboards to be up and running around 11am on Tuesday. But full data was unavailable until about midday with no known cause for the outage.

SA Health said it had identified the issue and dashboards were fully operating.

Opposition Health spokesman Chris Picton said the outage was “unacceptable” and that he had noticed the dashboards down since at least last Thursday.

Chris Picton speaking at a press conference with SA Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

He was sceptical of the timing of the missing data ahead of the March 19 state election, an attack dismissed as “ludicrous” by the government.

“For all of these systems to go offline for the past few days right before a state election, where health is going to be likely the number one issue, does seem very peculiar indeed and I think needs to be immediately addressed so people can get that picture of what exactly is going on in the health system,” Mr Picton said.

“Clearly it would be helpful for the government if people didn’t see the true picture of what was going on in our hospitals in the lead up to the election.”

A government spokesman said the issue arose overnight and was rectified by early afternoon.

“It is absolutely ludicrous to suggest it was a political act in the context of an election,” he said.

Ambulance ramping at the Royal Adelaide Hospital on Monday was an issue again raised by the Ambulance Employees Association (SA), with a Covid-positive patient allegedly waiting to be treated more than three hours in Mount Barker’s only ambulance.

SA Health Chief Executive Christopher McGowan told an ambulance ramping committee hearing yesterday that the department would move to publishing ambulance transfer data quarterly rather than daily.

“Publishing data on a daily basis takes a lot of effort and everything else, so we have taken a decision—and we will build this up over time—that much of our data will be published on a quarterly basis, and that will give the community a chance to see it,” Dr McGowan said.

“We will publish it every quarter, there will be a discussion about it when it is published, just like there is about allocation waiting times, and people will have access to it in an open and transparent way and can have the commentary on it at that time.”

Dr McGowan also told the hearing he was not aware of SA Health’s dashboards being down.

Minister Health and Wellbeing Stephen Wade has not yet responded to the Advertiser’s request for comment.