Western Australian Government departments are continuing on their warpath towards budgetary savings, this time hacking away at the health sector’s IT spending.

The WA health department has cut its spending by $77 million on ICT facilities this year, working to meet the mandate of the state’s leaders who are desperate to drum up funds in the ailing economy.

WA Health reported spending $326.2 million on ICT for both 2010-11 and 2011-12, but the latest report says they have managed to trim that down to $248.5 million in the last financial year. The department was only looking for $31 million in savings when its technology capital was last reviewed for reduction. The health department has managed more than double that figure for their contribution to saving the state some money.

The Western Australian Government is looking to save $1.8 billion in the public sector over five years to 2015-16 by deferring capital expenditure on a number of infrastructure projects, in order to “contain general government expense growth and deliver operating surpluses and affordable levels of net debt,” the 2012-13 budget papers explain.

WA Health Chief Information Officer Dr Andy Robertson said it was all about sensible cutbacks: “While there were reductions in the estimated total costs in 12/13, WA Health was able reprioritise its budget, by deferring some projects and reducing the scope on others,” he said.

Some of the savings may have come from the ability of a good IT innovation to save a job for humans, and in some cases perform the job considerably more efficiently. Along this line, WA Health has begun rolling-out its patient administration solution WebPAS. It is now set up in four metropolitan hospitals and hospitals in the greater southern region. WA Health’s clinical management system (iCM) as well as a new identity and access management system has been speeding processes at the new Albany Hospital.

This year should also see the introduction of WA Health’s $4.6 million clinical incident management system.