Paper working after disaster ‘not acceptable’

A senior executive for a health service local service provider (LSP) this week expressed the view that leaving large NHS trusts working on paper for a week after a disaster was ‘not acceptable’.

Sunil Patel, development director of Accenture, LSP for the North east and Eastern regions of England, was referring to the disaster at the end of 2005 when Northgate Information Solutions buildings were badly damaged in the explosion that wrecked a neighbouring fuel depot in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.

Patel told a conference this week that some acute trusts in Accenture’s regions found their patient administration systems (PAS) were not working for a week and had to go back to working on paper.

“That’s just not acceptable. One of the key benefits as you move towards LSP solutions is that you do get full disaster recovery,” he told the audience at the ‘Successful Implementation of NPfIT’ conference, organised by Eyeforhealthcare.

Another LSP representative, David Baker, NHS account director for CSC, did not mention the Hertfordshire disaster but provided the same sort of assurance saying that one of CSC’s achievements in the North West and West Midlands had been to set up the infrastructure for two massive data centres.

“The systems we are deploying are more robust and reliable and secure in terms of disaster [recovery] than anything the NHS has seen,” he said.

The LSP representatives gave broadly similar reports showing good progress on the deployment of PAS in community and mental health trusts and slower progress on acute sector PAS and clinical systems for areas such as theatres and accident and emergency.

Baker reported that CSC had implemented systems in about 60 trusts out of the 140 on its patch. He claimed ‘firsts’ in a number of areas including the first community PAS, first acute PAS and the first full disaster recovery test which involved getting all systems back up and running fully within two hours after a switch to a second data centre – and then switching everything back to the primary centre, again within two hours.

Patel’s list of Accenture deployments included around 260 systems in GP practices, 154 deployments of the Map of Medicine decision support software, SAP software for 45 PCTs and child health and community systems for 27 PCTs. In total, these deployments covered about 20-25% of Accenture’s regions.

He reported Accenture’s first system deployment two weeks ago in a prison, but in the acute sector he admitted: “We have more challenges, I’ll be honest about that.”

He said Accenture saw 2006 as the year when deployments would be scaled up and the LSP would “make things more repeatable, make things quicker and less painful for all parties concerned.”

He emphasised that Accenture was focused on the trusts as customers and acknowledged the difficulties they faced. “It’s tough out there – ferociously tough – for trusts to have this programme going through along with all the other programmes in the NHS. But I think the vision is absolutely still there and compelling.”

Baker also gave a frank account of some of the challenges faced in delivering the programme. He flagged up long testing cycles for small software modifications as an area of concern and said CSC was working with NHS Connecting for Health to safely reduce such testing times.

Clinical engagement – a recurrent theme in the conference – was named as a challenge for CSC. Baker described it as “critical to success but not straightforward.” He also spoke of the challenges created by the “dynamic environment” of the NHS. The reorganisation of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities was named as an example of the reconfigurations facing the NHS which required support from LSPs.

Related stories

Hemel explosion hits Northgate hospital customers