Bristol working on mid-April go-live

University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust has set 21 April as its go-live date for its Medway patient administration and electronic patient record systems.

The trust chose the System C products in May last year, after a six month selection process in which Cerner was also shortlisted.

The £8.2m, seven-year contract will see the systems implemented across the trust’s nine hospitals.

Paul Mapson, director of finance for University Hospitals Bristol, said testing would continue before next month’s go-live to make sure the system is accurately configured for all clinics and services and to make the trust is “as prepared as possible.”

Preparations will include a “full dress rehearsal” of the go-live process, previews with clinicians, and walk-throughs of patient pathways “so all users can be confident that they have access to the information they need when we go live.”

“The trust’s IM&T team has been working on ensuring the smooth implementation of the system since May 2011 including training staff, hosting open days and demonstrations across the trust,” Mapson added.

“Members of staff have been given various training options including classroom training, ward-based training and e-learning.

"This has been further supported by the release of Medway Play – a copy of Medway available for staff to practise on at their place of work.”

Mapson said Medway was “a modern system, built specifically for the NHS” and will help the trust realise many benefits for patients and staff.

Patient information from different clinical computer systems across the trust will be brought together in one place, giving users quick and easy access to information relating to a patient on one clinical desktop, he said.

Reporting tools will also help staff make timely decisions about patients’ care and ultimately improve patient care.

Mapson said that a range of hospital staff had been involved in the evaluation process to choose a new hospital system.

They were overwhelmingly in favour of going with System C – which was bought by US healthcare giant McKesson for £87m in May last year.

Solutions purchased by the trust include the PAS – replacing HP-EDS Swift – A&E, maternity, theatres, a clinical data collection module and a data warehouse and reporting system – Medway Business Intelligence.

The contract also includes a deployment service including data migration, localisation, integration, training, testing, go live support and seven years’ support.

UH Bristol has 9,000 staff and 980 beds and has purchased the systems outside of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

The trust’s annual report for 2011-12 estimates a capital expenditure of £11.2m on IM&T to “significantly renew the trust’s data and information structures (principally the patient administration system).”

The report says it is spending £4.9m this financial year, £5m next financial year and £1.3m in 2013-14.

It also details the key milestones for improving information and business process.

It says 2012-13 will see the go-live of the PAS and clinical desktop integration and the commencement of phase two and three – prescribing and document management – which will go-live in 2013-14.

Also, that all standard board and executive reports will be auto produced through the Business Intelligence Software in the coming financial year.