Queensland Health forced to recruit 30 staff to deal with bungled ordering system

Queensland Health has admitted it has had to employ dozens of extra staff to make sure it can pay bills to medical suppliers through its troubled new hospital ordering system.

QUEENSLAND Health has admitted it has had to employ 30 extra staff to make sure it can pay bills to medical suppliers through its troubled new hospital ordering system.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was yesterday forced to assure Queenslanders money was not being redirected from patient care to patch up another IT failure.

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Ms Palaszczuk said she had sought her own briefing on the system from Health Minister Steven Miles and his director-general last week and had been advised the system was “functioning within expected parameters” and that staff were “gradually beginning to settle into the new processes and practices”.

“Money that is directed to frontline services will not be diverted from frontline services,” she said.

The comments followed Health Minister Steven Miles’s admission that surplus money had been used outside the project’s $135 million budget to pay for extra staff to handle the troubled rollout.

The Courier-Mail can reveal 30 temporary staff have been recruited to support accounts payable and a special call centre set up to receive about 100 calls a day from suppliers chasing down payment under the new system, called S/4HANA.

Health Minister Steven Miles admitted extra staff were paid to handle the troubled rollout. Picture: AAP Image/Jono Searle

The funding is coming from the corporate services budget, although QH have not revealed the cost.

And despite the project’s planned “hypercare period” — a planned and funded three-month period to iron out issues — ending on October 31, QH have admitted additional expert help will be needed past that date.

“Like any large organisation, Queensland Health employs a range of experts to maintain and monitor our key systems — including S/4HANA,” a QH spokeswoman said.

She said “expert staff” working within the project would “transition to normal business support” to continue to support staff using the new system.

“Support for our great staff using the procurement and invoicing system will continue.

“This includes call centre staff who are assisting our vendors adapt to the new requirements of working with S/4HANA”.

“Casual contractors in our hospitals and distribution centres go up and down as demand needs — this is managed within existing operational budgets.”

System quirks and late payments to suppliers have seen hospitals blocked from ordering vital supplies since the August 1 rollout.