Allscripts wins EPR at Salford Royal

Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust has chosen Allscripts to supply its new electronic patient record system.

The trust becomes the second in the UK to select Allscripts in the past four months. In April neighbouring Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Foundation Trust became the first to choose the system.

Salford’s five year contract – thought to be worth between £5-10m – will cover the implementation of the company’s Sunrise Clinical Manager, which will replace iSoft’s Clinical Manager, which has been in use at Salford for ten years.

The trust went out to tender in August 2011, with the ambition of becoming “the safest hospital in the NHS.”

Dr Bob Young, a consultant at the trust, said in a statement that the Allscripts EPR will provide one central and secure location for patient records, allowing clinicians access in all stages of a patient’s care.

“Departments which have previously been reliant on paper will be able to use the system. For example, adding A&E means clinicians in this department will electronically log and track decisions on patient care, manage bed capacity and waiting times.

“The new system will also be compatible for both hospital and community staff, for example, health visitors and district nursing teams, which is crucial to Salford Royal in its new role as both a provider of acute and community services.”

The trust says the deal will also give it the potential to add a patient portal that will allow patients to log-on and view their records.

The iSoft system currently holds around 1m patient records and has around 7,000 users, including 160 GPs across 55 surgeries in the city.

Allscripts is set to commence implementation shortly. The trust aims to migrate 14m clinical letters and approximately 100m diagnostic results before the system is up and running in September 2013.

The trust believes the features of the new system will increase the reliability and consistency of care provided to patients.

The trust’s executive director of finance and deputy chief executive, Tony Whitfield, said: “Salford Royal continuously strives to be at the forefront of health informatics and prides itself on being a leader of the information revolution to transform the quality of healthcare it delivers.

“Our current EPR system has served us extremely well for the last 10 years but system development is moving forward at an ever faster pace and an EPR system must move with the times to meet the needs of a patient and their clinician.”