REGINA — In the end, the government lost patience with the bug-ridden rollout of the new Administrative Information Management System (AIMS) for time validation and scheduling.
"We haven't seen the pace of progress that I would have expected over the last couple of months to continue going down the road of implementing time validation and scheduling across the province," said Minister of Health Jeremy Cockrill on Wednesday. "And that's why the decision's been made.”
The government confirmed Wednesday it has directed Saskatchewan Health Authority, in partnership with 3sHealth and the Ministry of Health, to return to previous scheduling systems, a change that directly impacts around 7,000 employees who used the scheduling component in the former Kelsey Trail and Cypress health regions.
But AIMS remains in use for supply chain, finance, payroll, and human resources components, leading critics to say the government should have gone farther to either address those issues or scrap the AIMS system entirely.
In speaking to reporters Wednesday, Cockrill explained the decision to remove AIMS from scheduling came about from listening to concerns from the front lines and seeing for himself how it operated.
He said in August he toured Nipawin Hospital, located in the former Kelsey Trail health care region, and he got a first hand look at how the AIMS system operated.
Cockrill came away unimpressed.
“I remember distinctly, I got behind the computer with one of the managers in that facility and just asked her to walk me through a few different processes on the system,” said Cockrill.
He called it “incredibly complex… not easy enough access to the information that you would need as a manager to manage, you know, what is a busy regional hospital. And, you know, listen, I'm a small business person myself, I've managed staff, I've used IT systems. You want to actually focus on what you're there to do, the customer, or in this case, the patient that you're there to serve.”
Cockrill said he “took a lot of notes” of that visit at Nipawin Hospital, and took that back to the Saskatchewan Health Authority, to 3S Health, and the entire AIMS team, and “started walking through a process on how are we actually going to address these issues.”
“And, you know, to be fair, the AIMS team did address some of those issues, but not all of them…. and, you know, they couldn't give me a clear timeline on when we might start to see some of these fixes to make life better for patients and providers and managers.”
That concerned Cockrill, he said, because “I want our healthcare workers, whether they're on the front line or whether they're in a management position in a facility, I need their focus to be patients.”
For now, the health regions that used AIMS for time validation and scheduling are returning to using the legacy systems they had in place before.
In the short term, Cockrill said, “we have to get things stabilized in a place where, you know, where I'm comfortable with that we're dealing with payroll issues in, I think, a reasonable amount of time. We're not there yet. That's why I've asked the AIMS team to focus in on payroll issues and really get dedicated in addressing the issues that we do have right now.”
But Cockrill confirmed the province is going to have to invest and find a new time validation and scheduling system “down the road.”
“You know, and this is where I think it's important to remember, you know, the AIMS project as a whole is attempting to replace 80 some legacy systems. Do any of us still operate Windows 95 on our computer? No. I mean, at some point we updated to Windows ME and then Windows ME wasn't good, so then we updated to Windows 03 and down the road, right? At the end of the day, you know, the healthcare system can't keep running the equivalent of Windows 95 in many of these areas. We're going to need a new time validation scheduling solution down the road.”
Right now, AIMS is operational in Saskatchewan replacing 74 of the 80 legacy systems that were in place. Most of those are on payroll, human resources, finance, and supply chain. Cockrill made it known AIMS will stay for those areas, though he acknowledged it has not been a smooth transition there either.
“You know, and again, anytime you implement a massive new system, there's going to be little hiccups along the way. You know, we do have some in those other areas, but we've been working to address those and make sure those get ironed out as well for managers and employees across the province."
The province has already spent $250 million on AIMS, something Cockrill was asked about Wednesday.
“Let me just say, we're all taxpayers in this province. We all want to see value for the dollars that we pay and come off our paycheques every month or every two weeks. We do have a tolling agreement with Deloitte, who is the larger AIMS provider… There will need to be discussions with Deloitte down the road in terms of understanding what was recommended and why it didn't work.”
Health care unions report plenty of problems with AIMS
Unions representing health workers were at the legislature on Wednesday and heard the announcement from the gallery. They were happy to see AIMS removed for scheduling, but vented frustrations over problems caused by the system with respect to people’s pay and overtime.
“Come on man,” said Bashir Jalloh, President of CUPE health care workers in Saskatchewan. “You go to work, you get paid. Why can’t people get paid when they go to work because of your failed system? This is unfortunate.”
Cockrill acknowledged there payroll issues but said what was happening is “information from the time validation and scheduling aspect of AIMS is flowing into payroll. And if we're not getting good information from the (time validation and scheduling) side into payroll, then we're going to have issues on the payroll side, which we've seen certainly in the southwest, but also in the northeast as well.”
Lisa Zunti, president of SEIU – West said the problems with AIMS didn’t stop with scheduling. Another issue, she said, was problems in the ordering of needed supplies for not only general units in hospital but also for surgeries.
“So it’s not just time validation and scheduling that that we’re talking about and where the issues were. And these happened two years ago when it was rolled out in the former (Saskatoon Health Region), so while we’re very happy that they’re rolling it back as far as time validation and scheduling is concerned, and our members in Cypress will be extremely happy as well, but they’ve kind of felt like guinea pigs over the last little while. They’ve had this rolled out about eight weeks ago and they’ve been suffering through this for about eight weeks so while they will be happy there, they’re kind of scarred by the system if I may say so.”
On Thursday, both SEIU-West and the NDP opposition called for the Sask. Party government to fix or scrap the AIMS so healthcare workers could get paid and hospitals could get the equipment needed to function.
“Healthcare workers should not be going weeks or months without pay, especially when this government is paying through the nose for a crappy IT system throwing our hospitals into chaos,” said Keith Jorgenson, Saskatchewan NDP Associate Shadow Health critic, in a statement.
