Taumarunui practices return to the ‘old days’ to get through internet outage

“We are just so lucky that we have two practices in town that we can operate like that.”

GPs in Taumarunui returned to the “old days” to survive a three-day communications outage in the town – printing out prescriptions, sending faxes, and handwriting medical notes.

But it was a computer server shared by two of the three practices in the town and the ingenuity of practice staff that really saved the day, according to a practice manager, Lynda Bowles.

About 1200 customers in and around Taumarunui lost their internet and landline service when a fibre optic cable was damaged early on Monday in a road collapse near Te Kūiti.

Telecom infrastructure company Chorus says it fixed the initial damage on Tuesday but it took until about 5.30pm yesterday to fix a second fault discovered on another part of the 6km, 48-strand buried cable.

The outage affected different properties differently, depending on whether they were connected to the copper or the fibre broadband network, or whether the particular fibre strand serving them was damaged.

The town has three general practices, with three GPs and two nurse practitioners altogether.

The outage left Taumarunui Medical Centre without any internet or landline for three days, and its sister practice the Family Clinic was unable to use its EFTPOS machine or send prescriptions, lab test order forms or x-ray referral forms electronically.

But they figured out how to keep both running so that patients with an appointment still got the care they needed, according to Miss Bowles, who manages the two practices.

Key to their success was the fact they are both owned by health and social care provider the Taumarunui Community Kokiri Trust and share a server.

This meant staff at the Family Clinic were able to log into the practice management systems of both practices, and access Taumarunui Medical Centre’s patient appointments and medical records.

“One of the clinicians [from the medical centre], so either the GP or the nurse practitioner, and a nurse have been coming down to the Family Clinic and accessing the medical centre from the Family Clinic and seeing patients here,” Miss Bowles said during the outage yesterday.

“The receptionists have been on the phone ringing all [medical centre] patients saying ‘go to the Family Clinic’.”

Meanwhile, the other clinician stayed at the medical centre and saw patients who still turned up there, handwriting clinical notes and walking to the Family Clinic to enter them on the Medtech Evolution practice management system at the end of each day.

Miss Bowles, who worked at the Family Clinic during the three-day outage, said an extra 20 to 30 patients visited the clinic each day as a result of the arrangement.

And it would have felt to those old enough to remember like a return to the past, in some ways.

“I’ve worked in this type of work for 28 years and I said on Monday morning, let’s go back to manual,” Miss Bowles said. “So we’ve gone back to the old way, the old printing off and faxing.”

Prescriptions, lab test order forms and x-ray referral forms, which were previously sent electronically, were printed out instead.

Most of the scripts were faxed to the town pharmacy, but about one in five patients preferred to hand deliver them.

Hard copies of lab test forms and x-ray forms were handed to patients, and staff members used their mobiles to phone ahead to let hospital staff know someone was on their way.

With no EFTPOS available, the clinic took cash payments from patients who had cash and billed the rest to pay later.

The workarounds meant there wasn’t too much disruption for patients at either practice, according to Miss Bowles.

“The community’s pretty good about things like this because we’re a little rural country town,” she said yesterday.

“People who had appointments are still getting to see the clinician they’re booked in to see. It’s just that the medical centre patients who get a call have to come down to see their clinician at the Family Clinic.

“We are just so lucky that we have two practices in town that we can operate like that.

“But if both of our clinics were down, we would have worked something out. It would have been all handwritten notes and if need be for prescriptions as well.

“It’s just like going back to the old days, really.”

The Family Clinic is the smaller of the two practices, with 2111 enrolled patients as opposed to Taumarunui Medical Centre’s 3751.

At the Family Clinic there is one GP, whereas the medical centre has a GP and an NP.

The town, with around 4800 residents, has a third general practice, Pfeffer Medical Services, with one GP and one NP.

No one was available from Pfeffer Medical to speak to New Zealand Doctor Rata Aotearoa.