Humber extends use of Lorenzo

Humber NHS Foundation Trust is extending its use of CSC’s electronic patient record system Lorenzo after going live with it in May.

The trust is testing added functionality including day care and care plans to provide enhanced access to patient information for more than 600 staff across 55 different sites.

“We have more to deploy, and we’ll be the first of type for day care. I’m very excited about it”, said lead clinician on the Humber Lorenzo optimisation team, Karen Warwick.

The Lorenzo day care management functionality, which the trust hopes to deploy in February 2013, lets managers of day care services manage access, schedule patients at centres and individual sessions and record actual attendances.

The system is supported by access planning functionality, involving a specifically designed interface that lets managers easily see patients who are expected and sessions they are responsible for.

The trust will also work on deploying care management, inpatient prescribing and advanced bed management.

Speaking at the Healthcare Efficiency Through Technology Expo, Warwick and Lee Rickles, head of innovation at Humber, shared their experiences of going live with Lorenzo.

Both were enthusiastic with how the system works, but admitted that there had been a few kinks to sort out on the way.

“We had four cycles and realistically the first one was a waste of time. Most of the issues were sorted by the go-live date, but there were a few things that weren’t fixed,” said Rickles.

Warwick said it was not just kinks in the system that made it difficult, but rather that the staff just did not know how it worked.

“A lot of the clinicians don’t have the IT experience that others have. I think it’s really important that we help support them. “

Humber became the first mental health ‘early adopter’ of the Lorenzo system after Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust pulled out of the early adopter programme last year.

CSC was contracted to deliver Lorenzo to trusts across the North, Midlands and East of England as part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, but in a recent deal with the Department of Health, the provider’s exclusive rights were removed