Health care admin system with $272M price tag should be scrapped, says union
A union representing health care workers says the entire Administrative Information Management System (AIMS), recently introduced by the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) and intended to replace previous scheduling and payroll services, should be scrapped in response to the province rolling back a portion of it.
The SHA announced Wednesday that it is getting rid of the latest phase of AIMS responsible for scheduling 7,000 health care workers in the province following concerns from unions that the system was causing workers to not be scheduled, resulting in missed wages.
The first phase of AIMS was rolled out by the health authority in stages during the summer of 2024 and handles finance, payroll, human resources and supply chain systems. This phase of the system, which is used by 50,000 employees, is currently “stable” and not impacted by the recent decision, said Andrew Will, SHA CEO at a press conference Thursday.
The second phase of the system — focused solely on scheduling — rolled out to 4,000 workers in May and an additional 3,000 employees in July. This phase of the system is “introducing some errors” causing payroll issues for employees as workers are not being paid accurately for the time they put in, said Will.
“The product that was being used for scheduling, we’ve identified, is not user-friendly,” Will said, adding that the SHA is not able to address the challenges of the program and will have to scrap the scheduling phase of AIMS in its entirety.
“Our payroll system was more than 50 years old, which is a real challenge. We need to ensure that we have technology that will meet the needs of our health care workers across the province,” said Will.
The implementation and development of AIMS has now cost the province over $272 million — more than three times its initial slated price tag of $86 million. Will said he is unable to provide the cost of the scrapped second phase of the project by itself.
But Lisa Zunti, president of SEIU-West, a union representing over 11,000 health care workers in Saskatchewan, says its members are facing other problems with AIMS beyond scheduling, such as procurement of products.
“I don’t believe that it’s only the time validation and the payroll portion of it that is not working correctly,” Zunti said. “There is obviously more things that are not working in the system.”
Zunti says some of the issues her members described with the scheduling system involved them applying for shifts and not receiving feedback on whether or not they were successful in being scheduled.
“So people were left not knowing if they were actually supposed to show up at work,” she said. “So to me that doesn’t seem like a user error thing.“
Zunti says she would like to see AIMS completely removed from the health care system, as the previous ones worked just fine before.
“I have worked in the system for 21 years and never had an issue with the scheduling system prior to the AIMS implementation,” Zunti said.
Health Minister Jeremy Cockrill says he does not have plans to scrap the entire AIMS system and instead wants to focus on improving the current system.
“Is the NDP suggesting that we should just all go back to operating Windows 95? Operating legacy systems that are over 50 years old? That is not a legitimate solution,” Cockrill told reporters Thursday at Regina’s Legislature.
The province says payroll will be switched back to the old system by Nov. 30, and health care workers will be kept informed during the transition period to avoid any interruptions.
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