NHS chief exec pledges to help resolve CRS issues

NHS chief executive David Nicholson has told Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Trust that they can count on his full support to help resolve the problems they encountered after going live in April with a Cerner Care Records System provided by Fujitsu.

In April 79 members of staff from the trust signed a letter outlining their frustrations at the Millennium CRS system, describing the system "awkward and clunky" and stating: "In our opinion the system should not be installed in any further hospitals. Problems cited included incidences of lost records.

To help rebuild confidence and get a first hand picture on 14 May NHS chief executive David Nicholson and IT director Richard Granger visited the trust. "Mr Granger and Mr Nicholson gave the Trust their full support resolving issues related to CRS. The Trust is committed to working with CfH to improve CRS," a spokesperson told EHI.

NHS Connecting for Health said in April that there had been some "unacceptable problems" with the new system installed at Milton Keynes which "require immediate attention". Prime contractor Fujitsu said there had clearly been "some high impact problems".

The trust’s finance director Rob Baird was quoted in April as saying: "The service to our patients in some areas has diminished in this period. At the moment we have quite a confused situation and it’s like everyone had started a new job".

Since early April Fujitsu and Cerner have had a team working on site at Milton Keynes to resolve the problems.

The Milton Keynes spokesperson added that while progress was being made problems were still being worked through. "The Trust is working closely with Connecting for Health, Fujitsu and South Central SHA on resolving issues identified since the installation of CRS. Progress is being made, and clearly some issues will be solved more quickly than others."