Southend and Barking live with Medway

Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Barking Havering and Redbridge NHS Foundation Trust are live with the Medway patient administration system from System C.

Both trusts went live last weekend, transitioning from their legacy McKesson Totalcare systems, for which the contract expires in March next year.

Southend went live with its Medway PAS at 8.30am on Sunday morning. James Brown, chief clinical information officer and project sponsor for the trust, said that so far all is going well.

“We are pleased to confirm that our successful go-live took place this weekend and went according to schedule,” he said.

“We have gone live with the A&E, PAS and business intelligence modules as planned.”

Southend was originally due to go live with the system in July this year, but postponed the deployment to make sure the team was completely confident that the transition from the old system to the new would run smoothly.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust signed the contract with System C in May this year for its PAS and electronic results and reporting system.

The trust went live last Saturday, but when contacted about the deployment, declined to comment saying it is too early to say anything about how it went.

The two trusts are among 12 of the 26 Totalcare sites to choose the Medway system from System C, a McKesson company, as its replacement system.

The other 14 trusts are taking systems from suppliers including CSC, Silverlink, Meditech, Cerner, Cambio, Oasis and Ascribe.

MckessonUK along with its subsidiary companies, including System C, is currently for sale.

An announcement on a buyer is expected in the New Year, but a McKesson spokesperson said the sale will not affect further Medway deployments.