Dead people booked for operations due to NT health IT system failures, AMA says

Dead people are being booked for operations in the Northern Territory's public hospitals due to failures of a $335 million health IT system, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) says.

The peak body for doctors has revealed the latest issue for the troubled Acacia patient record system in its second submission to a parliamentary inquiry.

The AMA's submission also says some doctors are afraid to speak up about Acacia's issues because of confidentiality concerns and a fear of losing their jobs, labelling it a "chilling effect".

Surgical services is the area most impacted by Acacia's failings, the submission says, with doctors unsure how the system is booking dead people for operations.

In an interview with the ABC, AMA NT branch president John Zorbas said an "incredibly laborious" audit process had been established to correct the dead patients issue.

"Humans have had to move away from their day-to-day duties and dedicate time to fixing this problem and that should be a concern," he said.

"Acacia was supposed to be one system that resulted in the closure of multiple legacy systems, but what we've ended up with is a system which doesn't fully replace all the old functions, so we're having to keep the old legacy systems alive.

"That means having to access them when things don't quite match up in Acacia.

"It's like having seven apps open on your desktop to do one process."

Dr Zorbas said Acacia was also creating several other errors impacting surgical services, including incorrect next-of-kin details being imported into a patient's file.

Inquiry hampered by doctors' fears

First announced in 2016, the Acacia project was meant to integrate several legacy patient record systems into one.

But having blown its budget on multiple occasions, its rollout is only part-complete, leading to the parliamentary inquiry being established in February 2025.

The AMA's submission said the inquiry had been hampered by an inability for doctors to provide evidence confidentially, in private.

"Doctors approached do not have faith in NT Health, the Department of Corproate of Digital Development or whistleblower structures to protect them from retaliation," the submission reads.

"This should be a primary concern for the [inquiry].

"Such chilling effects can only harm patients in the NT.

"There are a number of senior clinicians who could certainly provide further and more detailed information."

The submission also said the way forward for Acacia was to "retool" it as a patient administration system that only managed hospital logistics and patients names and appointments.

This would see Acacia stripped of its clinical information functions.

"The idea that we, the Territory, a very small jurisdiction with a very small budget, would be able to have one single system that would just work across all domains, primary care, tertiary care, it was a gargantuan task and was doomed from the start, to be honest," Dr Zorbas said.