{"id":64225,"date":"2026-08-03T15:00:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/64225\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:00:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:00:29","slug":"dead-people-booked-for-operations-in-nt-public-hospitals-due-to-acacia-failings-ama-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/64225\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead people booked for operations in NT public hospitals due to Acacia failings, AMA says"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Acacia was suspended from use at Royal Darwin Hospital’s emergency department because it was a threat to patient safety. (ABC News: Tristan Hooft)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“That means having to access them when things don’t quite match up in Acacia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s like having seven apps open on your desktop to do one process.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

John Zorbas says money has been wasted on Acacia. (ABC News: Marcus Kennedy)<\/p>\n

Inquiry hampered by doctors’ fears<\/p>\n

First announced in 2016, the Acacia project was meant to integrate several legacy patient record systems into one.<\/p>\n

But having blown its budget on multiple occasions<\/a>, its rollout is only part-complete, leading to the parliamentary inquiry being established in February 2025.<\/p>\n

Patient record system a ‘disaster’ in NT hospital<\/a><\/p>\n

The long-awaited rollout of a new $259 million digital health IT system at Royal Darwin Hospital has been criticised by emergency doctors.<\/p>\n

The AMA’s submission said the inquiry had been hampered by an inability for doctors to provide evidence confidentially, in private.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“This should be a primary concern for the [inquiry].<\/p>\n

“Such chilling effects can only harm patients in the NT.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There are a number of senior clinicians who could certainly provide further and more detailed information.”<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Acacia was reintroduced into RDH in November 2025. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

This would see Acacia stripped of its clinical information functions.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

The NT Health Department has been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dead people are being booked for operations in the Northern Territory’s public hospitals due to failures of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[78158,22,21,8781,78161,6936,49739,78160,47606,47605,78159],"class_list":["post-64225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-acacia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-clp-government","tag-hospital-administration","tag-nt-government","tag-nt-health","tag-patient-systems","tag-rdh","tag-royal-darwin-hospital","tag-surgery-dead-patients"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}