Hawaii’s Prison Medical Records System Has Reached A Point of ‘Absolute Crisis’ 1 The continued failure of the electronic system has complicated efforts to provide inmates with the latest Covid-19 booster shot.
The state correctional system is struggling with an electronic medical records system that hasn’t worked properly since June, and medical staff at Hawaii prisons and jails are unable to access medical records including vaccination data for many inmates, according to corrections workers.
That last point is particularly frustrating because the Department of Public Safety began offering $50 incentive payments to prisoners more than a year ago to encourage them to get vaccinated against Covid-19 to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus inside state correctional facilities.
Many inmates’ vaccination records were scanned and loaded into the electronic system, but those are now unavailable to prison health care workers, according to staff who are familiar with the problem. The missing data includes records for inmates who have been vaccinated since April 2021, staff said.
Christin Johnson, coordinator for the Hawaii Correctional Systems Oversight Commission, described the problem Thursday as “an absolute crisis,” and said “the fact that EMR (Electronic Medical Records system) has been down for over six months is unacceptable.”
