Queensland's digital hospital roll-outs blow their budgets

The 'digital hospital' release of Queensland's integrated electronic Medical Record (ieMR) has blown the budget at the two hospitals it has been rolled out at, with Princess Alexandra Hospital and Cairns Hospital recording overruns of $12 million and $15 million respectively, almost double the projected cost for each.

The 850-bed PAH went live with the digital stack in November 2015 and 530-bed Cairns Hospital followed in February 2016, with the implementations complicated by the necessity to integrate Queensland's aged HBCIS patient administration system and an old version of the Auslab pathology system.