Two months in, local hospital staff are still underwhelmed by the new province-mandated computer system.

The Boundary Trails Health Centre ER transitioned from pen and paper record keeping to computer data entry in March.

Despite the benefits of going digital, ER Director Dr. John Allen says the program itself does have its shortfalls.

"Some of us have used it quite a bit in the last two months and I'm not sure it's going to get more efficient unless the program is changed," he says. "We compare it to our clinic programs and unfortunately, in our opinion, it's not as good."

While wait times overall have come down somewhat since the transition, patients can still expect to wait up to six hours.

"It's gone down considerably some days... but it varies," Allen explains.

The new 'Admission Discharge Transfer' program includes the digital record of patients' Manitoba health number and date of birth among other information, allowing doctors to see the kind of treatments patients have received in centres like Winnipeg.

'We're getting as efficient at it as we can," he says, adding it can still take some time to input all the information into the system.

"That does delay things a bit."

Another factor bumping up wait times is patients coming to the ER with minor issues.

"There's a fair number of people who come in who could go to the walk-ins, that does slow things down as well," he says. "Those people will wait much longer than the more emergent patients."

The changeover in March took place at BTHC as well as at the Bethesda Regional Health Centre in Steinbach and the Portage District Hospital.