HealthSMART – A Pretty Bad Report Card.

The Victorian Auditor-General issued a report card on the Victorian HealthSMART project last week and it did not make great reading.

A sample of the reportage

Correspondents in Melbourne | April 16, 2008

A $320 million IT program to help streamline Victoria's health system is running late and over budget, a new report has found.

The auditor-general's report says the HealthSMART program will not be finalised as expected by June 2009. The 2009 target was reset from the initial projected completion date of June 2007.

However, the Department of Human Services (DHS) has not yet told the government of any need to revise the completion date, the report says.

HealthSMART is aimed at improving patient care, reducing the administrative burden on health care professionals and easing costs associated with IT in the public health system by standardising information systems.

The department has spent 57 per cent of the project's budget on just one-quarter of the planned installations, and delays in the project mean that it will have to be subsidised by an added $61 million of DHS funds.

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