Chesterfield issues PAS tender

Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has published a tender notice for a patient administration system to replace its current system, which is reaching “end of life” in March 2014.

The tender, published in Official Journal of the European Union, says the trust wishes to procure a system that will be fully implemented by the time its contract for a McKesson PAS runs out.

The trust is one of 26 that were running McKesson’s Totalcare or STAR systems when NHS Connecting for Health signed a support deal with the company in 2006.

The deal recognised that delays to the National Programme for IT in the NHS would leave trusts needing to run their legacy systems until the ‘strategic’ Lorenzo EPR was ready.

The support deal ends in 2014, and a number of Midlands trusts have already issued tenders for PAS replacements. However, Chesterfield’s OJEU notice says the trust wants a system that can form the foundations of an electronic patient record.

“The system must interface to existing departmental systems during the initial transition and where necessary for the future. It is proposed that the successful system will be capable of forming the basis of an EPR system at a future date.”

The tender also indicates that the trust is interested in implementing a clinical portal, either from the winning PAS provider, or separately.

“The clinical portal should provide patient-context sensitive access to multiple clinical systems, initially within Chesterfield Royal Hospital, but potentially extending to other systems across the local community.”

The trust also requires the PAS to include hospital-wide patient management system functionality, outpatient clinic management, admitted patient care management, waiting list functionality, case note tracking, clinical coding as well as requiring a full data migration process.

Chesterfield’s annual plan 2011-2012 says that one of its main goals is to go and procure a new PAS. It underlines that new systems are needed not just because of the imminent end of the support contract, but to secure “further improvements to clinical care and business efficiency.”

Chesterfield implemented Totalcare in 1984. The trust’s tender notice says the new contract will be for an initial period of ten years, with the possibility of extension of up to five years, based on performance. The value of the tender is put at between £5m and £7.75m.