Sheffield abandons iSoft iPM implementation

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has abandoned plans to implement a new patient administration system from iSoft, the first stage of the local Care Records Service (CRS) software being offered to it under the NHS Connecting for Health programme.

After delays stretching back to 2004, the independent foundation trust, one of the largest hospital trusts in the country,  will now instead seek an “alternative solution”. This may be a non-CfH system.

Sheffield’s Board finally decided to call a halt to the implementation of iSoft iPM on 9 August. In a statement the trust told E-Health Insider the decision was reached because: “A number of requirements were not met before the go live date of June 2006. These requirements were agreed by senior representatives of the trust, the LSP and CfH.”

The trust had originally been due to receive the basic Phase 1 Release 1 (P1R1) of CRS back in November 2004, but the date has repeatedly been put back, and the project stopped and started, due to delays in completing the software.

EHI has learned that the decision to abandon implementing iPM was taken after Sheffield made site visits to both Scarborough Hospital and University Hospital Birmingham to see their local service provider (LSP) implementations of iPM. The trust, however, denied these visits had specifically triggered the decision: “The site visits did not have any material impact on the decision made by the trust but they informed our formation of the pre ‘go-live’ requirements.”

To date Accenture, the local service provider (LSP) for the North-east region, has implemented the CfH version of iPM at just one hospital trust – Scarborough and North East Yorkshire NHS Trust, which has proved problematic.

Sheffield had been due to go live with a new iSoft iPM PAS system to replace the three PAS systems currently in use – McKesson TotalCare, McKesson TPA and iSoft Clinicom – with a single system. The new iSoft system had been due to be implemented by local service provider Accenture, by no later that mid-October. CfH implementation schedules still show the trust going live with iPM this October.

In a statement the trust told E-Health Insider: “As an early implementer of CRS the trust had commenced a project to replace the Weston Park TPA PAS with iSoft’s iPM, the North-east cluster’s PAS solution. Following extensive discussion the trust board took the decision to halt the implementation of iSoft iPM and an alternative solution is being pursued that will reduce the number of PAS used in the trust.”

The trust now has just months to find and implement an alternative PAS as the McKesson TPA PAS system in use at Weston Park Hospital only has limited support from September with no support at all by the end of December. One possibility is to extend the use of McKesson Totalcare, already used at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital.  

“The option to extend McKesson TotalCare to Weston Park is under consideration,” a spokesperson told EHI.

Chris Linacre, director of service development at the trust said Sheffield remained committed to NPfIT: “The trust is a complex organisation and is in a unique position in that we currently use three different PAS systems across two hospital sites. Replacing these with a single PAS system is a significant project so we must be certain that the new universal system will meet the complex requirements of all of the five hospitals.”

Linacre added: “The trust is continuing to work with Yorkshire and the Humber Strategic Health Authority, Connecting for Health and the LSP to develop plans for a strategic PAS replacement and is committed to introducing a trust-wide PAS at the earliest opportunity with an alternative solution provided as part of NPfIT.”

The trust has recently approved implementation of a radiology information system from Accenture as the first step to implementing the LSP’s picture archiving and communications system.

Earlier this month Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, also situated in the North-east Accenture cluster, went out to open procurement for a PAS system. In December 2005 Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Trust, in the eastern Accenture cluster, abandoned plans to implement the CfH PAS choosing to further develop its existing McKesson system.