The ministry announced the suspension on Saturday, 17 October, two days after the accident outside the Castries hospital disrupted the service linking 18 public clinics. Officials said no patient suffered serious harm, but the outage exposed how much the clinics relied on software to sort routine referrals and follow-up visits.
A review of 486 appointments made during the outage found that 21 people should have received earlier slots under the paper-based rules used by nurses. Fourteen had chronic conditions requiring closer follow-up. The ministry said all 21 have now been contacted and offered appointments, with the first visits scheduled for Monday.
The outage becomes a test
The collision happened shortly before 06:30 on Friday, when a delivery van clipped a roadside communications cabinet as it turned near the hospital entrance. The damaged connection cut the clinics off from a central service called CareOrder. Reception staff reverted to paper forms and nurse-led assessment while technicians restored the link later that morning.
CareOrder ranks referrals using reported symptoms, medical history and how recently a patient was seen. It does not make diagnoses, but its ranking determines which cases reception staff offer first-available slots. The ministry said the software had been in use for 14 months and that this was the first unplanned period when all 18 clinics worked without it.
Health Minister Maria Tse said the outage prompted a comparison that officials had not previously carried out across the whole network. “The system is paused because people need to know why a nurse’s judgement moved 21 cases ahead of the machine,” she said. The ministry has ordered a review of the ranking rules before CareOrder can return.
We cannot call a queue fair until we can explain who it puts at the back.
Maria Tse, health minister
Clinics return to paper
At Port Azure, nurse Manoela Garcia said staff asked patients about changes in their symptoms rather than relying on the ranking displayed on screen. “The paper list was slower, but it made us stop and ask what had changed since the last visit,” she said. The hospital said walk-in emergency care continued under its usual clinical procedures.
One patient, Aarón J. Valles, said he had waited for a follow-up appointment for a breathing condition when a nurse called him back to check his symptoms. He was offered a new slot for Monday. “I thought I was still in the same place in the queue,” he said. “Then someone actually asked me how the last week had gone.”
The health ministry says it has not found evidence that CareOrder caused a missed emergency response. It will compare the 21 re-ranked cases with the system’s recommendations and publish a summary by 31 October. The software contract cost EC$4.8 million (about €1.6 million), including training and clinic support.
Clinics will use nurse-led triage until the review is complete, the ministry said. It has asked patients with appointments already set to keep them unless a clinic contacts them directly. Officials have also asked the software supplier to explain how the ranking rules handle chronic conditions and long gaps between visits.
