Alberta Health Services is investigating after some patient referrals to external health care providers in the province's Central Zone were not properly processed.
The Alberta Goverment said the zone experienced approximately 741 "unsent referrals".
On Friday, the provincial health authority announced it is "taking immediate action" to expedite care for patients who may have been impacted by delayed referrals to community health care providers. In some of these cases, this has caused a delay in care, AHS noted.
Further investigation determined that the issue was not limited to Central Zone, and that some patients in all five AHS zones (Central, North, Edmonton, Calgary, South) may have been impacted.
“AHS is dedicated to providing Albertans with the high-quality care they need, when they need it, and we are deeply sorry that some patients did not receive that in a timely way,” said Athana Mentzelopoulos, President and CEO, AHS.
“We welcome this third-party review and look forward to working closely with HQCA to ensure that our systems have robust safeguards in place that will prevent something like this from happening in the future.”
AHS states it will directly contact each patient impacted. These patients will be provided with the opportunity to address any questions and concerns they might have.
"While AHS is reviewing a large number of referrals to ensure a clear picture of the issue, to date, the potentially affected patients are a small number of the total referrals being assessed," says an AHS media release.
"This issue applies to referrals from AHS to healthcare providers who are outside of AHS and not Connect Care users, such as specialty clinics and allied health professions (for example, physiotherapists). These providers operate in partnership with AHS but work in a community setting, and typically have their own electronic medical record system that does not allow for referrals to easily flow from Connect Care to their systems directly."
On average, AHS issues approximately 100,000 referrals annually.
"AHS has also implemented several measures to prevent this in the future, including increasing training for processing patient referrals, improved auditing to mitigate future challenges, and improving electronic delivery of outgoing referrals. AHS will work closely with the Health Quality Council of Alberta, as part of their independent, third-party review into this issue."
