Basildon buys Medway

Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has bought the Medway electronic patient record system.

Basildon runs McKesson’s legacy Totalcare patient administration system which will not be supported from March next year.

The trust has signed with System C, a McKesson company, to replace its PAS with go-live planned for October 2013.

Order communications and results reporting is expected to be deployed in early 2014, as the trust looks to build an integrated EPR.

Basildon and Thurrock’s director of strategic development Mark Magrath said order communications would be running in the background from October, so when it went live in 2014 there would be three to four months of results already in the system.

He explained that business cases had not yet been approved for other clinical modules to be added, but the trust could call-off against the contract for; e-prescribing; medicines management; A&E; maternity; theatres; and clinical observations and noting.

The contract follows Basildon’s investment in an electronic medical records system in 2011, involving thousands of historical notes being scanned into the system and made available to view online.

Magrath said the EMR would be launched from within the home screen of Medway via a widget.

“What we are deploying in October is in my view an EPR, so via the homescreen you have access to all the PAS, then very shortly after that access to order communications and results, and EMR records,” he explained.

Magrath was also hopeful of getting access to PACS images through the EPR.

Basildon and Thurrock EPR project manager Steven Thorndyke said McKesson had won a rigorous procurement process and its system offered excellent value for money.

“The deployment of the Medway PAS will be the foundation for a full electronic patient record programme for our patients.

"[This will help] us to provide high quality healthcare, optimise outcomes through effective care delivery and improve care planning and documentation within the local care pathway,” he said.

“The new system will support strategic objectives and bring benefits to the wider health community, including easier sharing of information between clinicians.”

System C sales director Gary Davies said the value of a modern reliable PAS should never be underestimated.

“It provides the key pillar of a hospital’s patient care and patient management systems, supporting improvements in quality and driving efficiencies across both the trust and the wider NHS,” he said.

Basildon was this week named as one of five trusts that will have their mortality rates investigated by the NHS Commissioning Board in reaction to the official report into mistreatment and neglect at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.