Thousands of Sask. health-care workers to stop using AIMS for scheduling

Thousands of health-care workers in the province will stop using AIMS for scheduling. Wayne Mantyka has the details.

Health-care workers in Saskatchewan will return to using scheduling systems that were in place before the Administrative Information Management Systems (AIMS), Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill announced on Wednesday.

In a social media post, Cockrill said the provincial government instructed the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) and 3sHealth to return to the old system for scheduling, in light of complaints heard by health-care workers in the province.

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“Despite being a significant project replacing 80 outdated technologies, the employee scheduling component has not performed as expected,” he said.

“There have been scheduling errors that have led to pay errors and challenges in day-to-day operations. That’s unacceptable, and it must be fixed. While significant effort has been put into correcting these problems, we have now determined that the AIMS team and the technology vendor will not be able to resolve the technical issues as quickly or effectively as needed”

A news release from the SHA thanked health system employees for their dedication in adapting to AIMS, while also acknowledging the frustrations surrounding the program.

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The SHA said they are aiming to return to previous scheduling systems by Nov. 30, noting that health-care staff will receive direct communication and support through the transition.

The change affects about 7,000 health system employees working in the former Kelsey Trail and Cypress Health regions, who use the scheduling component of AIMS.

According to the SHA, the supply chain, finance, payroll, and human resources components of the program are not affected.

During legislative assembly on Wednesday, NDP MLA Meara Conway called AIMS a “disastrous program.”

“People are not able to schedule shifts. People are not able to access critical equipment. People are not getting paid … $250 million with nothing to show for it,” she said.

“Who is going to be accountable for this mess?”

Cockrill said he toured health-care facilities and heard feedback from frontline health-care workers over the summer, leading to the decision being made.

“Based on that feedback, this government is not willing to spending any more money on a time validation and scheduling part of the AIMS project that is not meeting the needs of health-care workers in this province,” he said.

Cockrill reiterated that Wednesday’s announcement does not mean the cancellation of the entire AIMS project, but rather the scheduling component specifically.

He said the AIMS project seeks to replace 80 legacy systems, with 74 of those systems already replaced.

“We have not been happy with the results of the time validation and scheduling piece of that system heard directly from health-care workers in the former Kelsey Trail area, the former Cypress area,” he said.

“We’ve been working closely with the AIMS team over the last several months to rectify some of these issues. These issues are not being rectified fast enough.”

Speaking to reporters after question period, Cockrill said the AIMS team did address some of the issues health-care workers had, but not all of them.

“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 or for patients and providers and managers,” he said.

Cockrill said getting back to the legacy systems for scheduling is a short-term solution until a long-term solution can be found.

“We need a new time validation, scheduling solution down the road. Focus in the short term, it’s going to be stabilizing those 7,000 employees back in legacy systems. For the long term, we will need to find another solution,” he said.

SHA and 3sHealth officials are scheduled to hold a media availability in Saskatoon on Thursday, regarding the announcement.