Surrey and Sussex becomes sixth Millennium site in South

 Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, the latest trust to go-live with Cerner’s Millennium R0 patient administration system (PAS) delivered by local service provider Fujitsu.  The trust has successfully completed their 45 day implementation programme, but have opted not to deploy order comms functionality yet.

The trust, which went live on 20 April, delayed deployment of the CRS by a week after their Care Records Service project team identified concerns which required resolving, but said that they felt that the system they now have in place meets their requirements and delivers benefits to the trust.

“The key benefit is the move from retrospective data entry to entering patient information into the system immediately. Real time data entry enables us to better manage our resources such as bed usage and staffing levels,” a spokesperson told E-Health Insider. The new Cerner system replaced the trust’s legacy McKesson Star PAS.

“A major change programme such as this requires staff to get used to new ways of working. Cultural change is always challenging, however our staff are adapting well and staff new to the trust have taken to the system very easily. There has been an extensive programme of training as one would expect with such a major programme of change and which from the outset has been well resourced,” the spokesperson said.

Key challenges experienced by the trust have included ensuring that staff in out patients were able to deal with patients as quickly as possible. Delays to the implementation were necessary to ensure that the system was clinically safe and met all requirements of the trust, to avoid potential problems.

“The trust went through an extensive process to ensure it was absolutely ready to go live with NHS CRS. One of the fundamental requirements was to make sure there was no clinical risk to patients in the changeover to a new system," said the trust spokesperson.

They added: "The authority to proceed was signed off by our chief executive and our director of nursing after widespread and thorough checks ensuring that all of the necessary actions and work required pre go live had taken place,” the spokesperson said.

Working closely with Fujitsu and Cerner, the trust evaluated the solution and specified the functionality they wanted to meet their requirements.

Their current solution includes the basic PAS functionality and new modules providing tools for the emergency department, maternity department and the operating theatres. The trust has deiced to wait to implement order comms and choose and book functionality.

“The Trust specifically chose to phase functionality over a longer period. The Trust is now continuing to monitor very closely the bedding in of the system and will continue to build on the current system to gain the real benefits of order comms and choose and book,” they said.

Surrey and Sussex declined to comment on why they had opted not to implement order communications in Millennium, but instead said they are working closely with Cerner to have the functionality in time for R1.

In the next release of Millennium, R1 due in 2008, the trust said they have ‘requested the functionality to include paperless ordering of pathology, radiology and other services with the ability to post results from investigations electronically to lead to much faster and more effective clinical care for patients.’

“The trust is currently moving into the planning stage for the implementation of R1 which we anticipate will be delivered in 2008. Current plans are for neighbouring trusts to go live with NHS CRS in summer 2008.”

Millennium now works alongside the Eclipse maternity information system used by the trust and within 15 minutes of go-live the first new baby details were successfully entered into the system.

The emergency department is now electronically capturing and managing all activity in real-time and the trust are able to see the current bed availability situations immediately. Clinical notes are being tracked easily and IT service desk calls are being reduced, from what was previously a peak of 100 calls an hour.

The trust claims that much of this was achieved within the first 24 hours of go-live. Professor Irene Scott, director of nursing at the trust, told EHI: “Overall, the implementation of this programme has been a demonstration of the ability of Surrey & Sussex NHS Trust to succeed in a very demanding and stretching environment.”

Eddie Crunden, lead nurse in critical care, added: “Some people felt go-live was going to be complete chaos. It wasn’t. It was high pressure and extremely hard work. But it felt well organised and co-ordinated. There was a lot of information provided in easy to use formats. This really helped things run smoothly.”

The trust says it is now fully satisfied with its R0 deployment and has formally accepted the delivered system. They are the sixth trust to have received the system from Fujitsu, a spokesperson for the LSP said.

Lester Young, NHS account director at Fujitsu Services told EHI: “The roll out of CRS in Surrey and Sussex has been a huge success and this is a tribute to the way the project has been managed internally. From the beginning it has been run and led as a change management project with full clinical involvement rather than as a stand-alone IT project.

“Trust CEO Gail Wannell has been closely involved throughout as was Irene Scott, the director of nursing. This has led to an exemplary roll out and one where the on-site teams are reaping the benefits of the new CRS straight away. We could not have achieved this success without the tremendous hard work and dedication of the NHS teams on the ground.”