Valuable work lost for good in hospital glitch

Thousands of hours of irreplaceable work belonging to hundreds of Waikato District Health Board staff has been lost permanently after computer experts failed to retrieve two-thirds of crashed data.

The information, which had been backed up in Waikato Hospital's storage area network, vanished on Labour Weekend last year after a major computer error the cause of which remains under wraps.

US experts were called in to retrieve the data, which included emails and personal work files that belonged to 690 staff at the DHB.

At the time one doctor said the damage to him alone was huge and included lost teaching material and guidelines, legal records for court cases, and minutes from meetings.

Others had lost work toward graduate diplomas.

The retrieval cost the DHB $US30,280 (NZ$37,800) but turned up only one-third of the lost data, leaving some staff disgruntled.

Waikato DHB chief information officer Alan Grainer said those staff upset by the permanent loss were offered other recovery options such as scanning from original documents and earlier versions of the document gleaned from other sources.

"There has been a wide range of reaction from those (staff) who have responded formally to the final result.

"The majority of them have moved on; a small number remain unhappy and dissatisfied and we are working closely with them."

He added that the information recovered included key critical finance data.

Mr Grainer said analysis of the cause of the glitch, carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers at a cost of $12,929, would not be made public until after an independent review process within the DHB had been completed.

However, he said it had been established that "multiple" causes contributed to the incident, which had been classified as a "sentinel event".

"A number of corrective actions were instituted immediately following the event; others were implemented through to Christmas 2007, and work is currently being undertaken to further improve the level of operational and management control in place, and the technology infrastructure used to manage storage and back-ups," Mr Grainer said.

He said accountability for the computer error sat at a senior management level with him.

"Waikato DHB does not operate a culture of name, blame and shame. That would be inappropriate and counter-productive. The focus here is on learning from sentinel and serious events and this is definitely occurring."

In a letter to staff, the DHB said it was aware of the high level of frustration and dissatisfaction from the storage failure and subsequent loss of data.

"The event review is being conducted in accordance with Waikato DHB's Serious and Sentinel Event Procedure, and the review is focusing on learning from the event rather than seeking to blame individuals."

The review panel asked Pricewater-houseCoopers for more clarity, further recommendations to improve monitoring of the storage area's effectiveness including early detection of problems and development of an action plan to implement each recommendation.

A final report and action plan will be reviewed and approved by the panel early in April.

Meanwhile, a "witch hunt" to catch the anonymous emailer who tipped off the Waikato Times to the severity of the impact of the computer error has been denied by the DHB.

The Times was emailed a letter from someone purporting to be a senior doctor at Waikato Hospital, leaking details of the computer glitch incident days after it happened.

When the Times called the doctor to discuss the email, it was discovered he was not the sender. "We have no idea who sent that email," DHB spokeswoman Mary Anne Gill said. Mrs Gill said no action was taken against the doctor or anyone else over the leaked information.

"There was no witch-hunt."