Ampang Hospital thrown into chaos again by IT glitch, as questions surround RM29 million eHIS contract

There has been chaos and confusion at Ampang Hospital as medical staff and patients bore the brunt of yet another breakdown of its computer system, forcing a switch to manual methods that have slowed treatment procedures since yesterday.

The Hospital Information System (eHIS) stopped working at around noon yesterday and continued at press time, in what is the longest glitch since a similar incident on April 23 which lasted more than 30 hours, disrupting patient admissions, blood test procedures and drug prescriptions for several days, and causing the postponement of treatments.

As of 11 am today, the downtime alert has been lifted, but operations have not yet been fully restored.

The latest breakdown also occurred amid questions over the awarding of a tender to maintain eHIS at another government hospital to the same company responsible for maintaining the system at Ampang Hospital.

On Aug 17, MalaysiaNow reported that the health ministry had in July awarded the company a three-year contract worth RM29.1 million to maintain eHIS at Hospital Sultan Ismail in Johor, about RM10 million more than the contract it received in February at Ampang Hospital.

The contractor has refused to answer questions from MalaysiaNow, saying the matter should be referred to the health ministry.

Following the latest glitch, the hospital activated a business continuity plan to ensure services were not disrupted, using manual means while the IT system was being restored.

“I’ve asked my nurses to manually call our patients to bypass the registration process. That’s what we did the last time,” a medical officer told MalaysiaNow under strict conditions of anonymity.

Checks at the hospital lobby showed crowds of people waiting for their turn to receive treatment, many of whom had arrived since early morning.

Public health portal CodeBlue previously reported that Ampang Hospital, which was among the earliest in the country to introduce the fully computerised Total Hospital Information System (THIS), suffered system glitches more than 10 times last year, with the April 23 outage being the worst.

Health ministry officials had to step in with solutions during the ensuing chaos.

MalaysiaNow has reached out to Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad for his response on the latest glitch.

He had previously promised to check with the appropriate divisions for more details on the contract awarded to the company.

“I welcome you to conduct this investigation of any transgression or impropriety,” he told MalaysiaNow.