Ipswich Hospital thrown into chaos after two alert systems triggered at once

Ipswich Hospital has been thrown into chaos with a double whammy of two alert systems triggered at once prompting a “please explain” from the Opposition.

Ipswich Hospital was affected by an IT issue overnight, causing two alert systems to be triggered at once. Picture: David Clark

Ipswich Hospital was thrown into chaos on Wednesday with the facility grappling with a double whammy of two alert systems triggered at once.

A Code Yellow was called due to an IT problem which impacted scanning services while the hospital was running on a Tier 3 capacity which forces patient loads to be distributed across other hospitals.

“Ipswich Hospital was affected by an IT issue overnight that disrupted clinicians’ ability to access CT scans. To ensure the safety of patients, Queensland Ambulance Service took any patients whose condition meant they may need a CT scan to facilities in neighbouring regions such as Metro South, Metro North and Darling Downs,” West Moreton Health Chief Executive Hannah Bloch said.

West Moreton Hospital and Health Services bosses are working with eHealth to determine the causes of the IT outages.

Ipswich Hospital issued three Tier 3 escalations during the December 2023 quarter, each lasting an average of 31 hours and 39 minutes.

“Walk-in presentations and low-acuity patients continued to present to Ipswich Hospital Emergency Department and Ripley Satellite Hospital during this period. Full services came back online at 8am today,” the spokeswoman said.

Wednesday’s Code Yellow was enacted via the usual incident management protocols.

At the end of last year, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman announced that 24 new beds would be added to acute wards and 12 at the emergency department’s short stay facility.

Health Minister Shannon Fentiman said Ipswich Hospital was one of the state’s largest. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Ms Fentiman also promised a staff recruitment drive for the hospital.

She said the Ipswich hospital was one of the busiest in the state, and had generally seen a “massive increase in the presentation of the most complex and urgent cases”.

“Overnight, there was an IT issue which affected the ability of staff to upload images from a CT scanner, so overnight any patients that required CT scanners were diverted to the Princess Alexandra Hospital or the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital,” she said.

“But otherwise patients continued to be treated in the ED and ambulances continued to arrive.

“I’m advised that has been back up and running since early this morning.”

The Minister also said there were still some “minor systems” being worked on.

“The Ipswich hospital staff work incredibly hard, they will care for you, and please don’t hesitate to call an ambulance if you believe you’re in a life threatening situation,” she said.

But LNP Deputy Leader Jarrod Bleijie accused Ms Fentiman of being “dismissive” of the issue - and said she must explain what had gone wrong to cause such a disruption.

“The issues at Ipswich are very concerning, more concerning is the fact the Minister has dismissed it as just an IT bungle,” he said.

“How do these bungles keep happening under her watch?

“IT issues are issues that the Minister is responsible for and can do something about - why is the Labor party always blaming someone else?”