Ms ROSOL – The Human Resources Information System (HRIS) in the Department of Health was scheduled to be rolled out and operational by the second half of 2024. Can you give us an update on what the status of the HRIS is and has there been any reduction to its scope or implementation?
Mr BARNETT – Thanks very much for the question. It’s something the Health department has been leading, for and on behalf of the government, for some time. It’s a considerable effort and investment. I know the acting secretary and the team take it very seriously, so I’ll pass to the acting secretary to respond to that question.
Mr WEBSTER – The Human Resources Information System is an incredibly complex program that we’re doing on behalf of whole of government, but we’re probably the most complex agency. There’s a number of things we’ve had to work through, everything from in the last round of EBAs we actually had to agree on a whole lot of clauses with the unions that would modernise how we process time so that we can actually intersect with HRIS. That has slowed us down.
However, the first module has already been rolled out, which is case management. We prioritise that module because it was a recommendation of the commission of inquiry. That has gone live a number of weeks ago now and, in fact, has rolled out across all agencies. No, not yet? Will roll across all agencies.
In terms of the main module that we’ve been talking about, which is the payroll system that has rostering attached to it and all of those automations we desperately need, that is scheduled for the third quarter of 2025. The main work that needs to happen within the Department of Health in the lead-up to that is we need to review all of our rostering, standardise it more and, if we can, digitise it into systems so it can be automatically uploaded. At the moment, for a very large number of our staff across the state, they fill out a manual timesheet which gets literally signed on a piece of paper and sent to someone to data-enter, so it slows down our entire processes.
HRIS is a goal we’ve been working on for a period of time, but the main delays have been around we actually have to take fairly antiquated human resources processes – I won’t even call them systems, and uplift them all the way to a digital platform. I’ll give you one example: we actually run 700 separate roster processes across the department.
Ms ROSOL – Thank you. Minister, what additional nursing resources have been allocated to the state’s emergency departments to assist with the increased workloads that are associated with the government’s new transfer‑of‑care procedure to assist nurses who are now looking after patients in corridors with no additional staffing?
Mr BARNETT – I think you’re aware we have concluded the recruitment of 44 doctors and 25 nurses to the Royal Hobart Hospital emergency department. Secondly, we take this very seriously and you’ve seen the beneficial results for our ambulance care into the community, with 9000 hours’ improvement. We have regular meetings with the unions, the department and the AMA on transfer‑of-care delay. The most recent one was a few weeks ago. The chief executive of Ambulance Tasmania indicated that we’re bringing forward the review of that transfer‑of‑care delay activity, in terms of the numbers. I’ll pass to the acting secretary.
Mr WEBSTER – We had this question yesterday. We haven’t actually split number of nurses, number of doctors out in the figures we’re providing. You asked for the number of nurses in ED.
Ms ROSOL – No, I, asked what additional nursing resources are being allocated to help cope with the transfer‑of‑care change in procedure.
Mr WEBSTER – In the south, 25 additional nurses are employed to increase the treatment points as part of the $22 million announcement by government.
At the LGH, an uplift to ED to ensure there are 26 nurses on day shift, 28 on afternoon shift and 24 on night shift. That has required us to have a large number of agency nurses to make sure we maintain those numbers on a daily basis. The Launceston General Hospital ED is subject to nursing hours per patient presentation, I think you would call it, rather than day calculation, which we’ve worked through with the ANMF because there was a recalculation of that because of the nature of the ED. The minister has talked about the need to expand the space at the Launceston General Hospital. We actually have a separate agreement with the ANMF that has a top‑up in addition to the calculation of nursing hours per patient presentation. The uplift is we went from 22 to 26 on day shift, 25 to 28 on afternoon shift and 21 to 24 on night shift.
