AHS ‘deeply sorry’ for delay in patient referrals

EDMONTON – The Health Quality Council of Alberta is investigating how some medical referrals weren’t properly processed, potentially affecting 14,000 patients over the last five years across the province. Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said she has asked the Health Quality Council of Alberta to provide an independent third-party review to investigate the problem.

The provincial agency will provide a review of systems and operational processes to determine how the situation occurred and how to prevent it in the future. The review is currently in the early stages.

“Timely access to care at critical times is a priority. This issue is greatly concerning, and we are committed to taking swift action to ensure AHS addresses and prioritizes the issue,” LaGrange said.

An internal AHS audit completed in late September showed that some patient referrals to community specialists and other health providers outside of AHS were not processed through Connect Care – the province-wide electronic medical record system – in some cases causing a delay.

AHS notes that typically, specialists outside of its scope have their own medical record systems which don’t allow referrals to easily flow from Connect Care to their systems directly.

An internal AHS audit revealed that some referrals to specialists outside AHS were not being processed. Approximately 14,000 patients may have been affected, with 31 patients identified as needing immediate follow-up. Those 31, says the province, may have experienced a potential negative outcome due to this delay.

Unsent referrals total about 741 in Central Zone, 549 in North Zone, 10,025 in Edmonton Zone, 3,329 in Calgary Zone, and 268 in South Zone.

AHS is also expressing its regret over the delays.

“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 (pictured), 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.”

On average, AHS issues close to 100,000 referrals annually.

AHS adds that it has implemented several measures to prevent this issue from happening again, including increasing training for processing patient referrals, improved auditing to mitigate future challenges, and improving electronic delivery of outgoing referrals.