Walsall first combined trust for Lorenzo

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust has become the third trust to go-live with its Lorenzo electronic patient record system this year.

The trust went live with the system on Sunday, making it the first acute and community trust in the country to do so.

Walsall has followed closely behind Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which went live with Lorenzo last week, and Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust which went live with the system in February.

Jayne Tunstall, the trust’s chief operating officer, said the go-live means the trust has switched off the two patient administration systems used in community and acute services.

“This is phase 1 of the improvement to our patient record,” she said. “We will now commence work on phase 2, which will further enhance clinical access and use of the patient management system whilst continuing to provide excellent patient care.”

According to EHI Intelligence, Walsall previously used the legacy McKesson Star PAS for its acute services and CSC’s iPM PAS for its community services.

The trust has deployed the Lorenzo Care Management and Emergency Management modules and is using the system as a unified PAS across all acute and community services.

Staff across acute and the community will use different functionality to suit their business needs; for example, community-based staff will use the ‘case loads’ module.

Walsall first committed to taking the Lorenzo EPR as part of the National Programme for IT, for which CSC was the local service provider for the whole of the North, Midlands and East of England.

Delays to the development and deployment of the Lorenzo system led to a revised deal being signed between the Department of Health and the company in September last year.

This removed CSC’s right to be the exclusive provider of IT systems to the NME, but also made central funding available to trusts that still wanted to take Lorenzo.

Walsall went out to tender for a PAS in April 2012, but put its procurement process on hold while it reviewed the Lorenzo offer.  In April last year, the trust had its business case approved by the CSC LSP Programme Board.

The deployment of Lorenzo is part of the trust’s improvement programme and in preparation for the go-live last weekend, 2,000 staff underwent extensive training, tailored to their role.

CSC has also worked closely with the trust throughout the deployment process and will continue to provide support for the trust over the next few weeks.  A spokesperson from CSC said the company is “delighted” that Walsall has chosen Lorenzo and that it has achieved its third go-live in 2014.

EHI understands the next deployment will be Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust this summer, followed by Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust in September 2014.