Sheffield Children’s live with Medway

Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust went live with its Medway patient administration system over the weekend.

The trust, which previously used the legacy Totalcare PAS, also from McKesson, migrated around 430,000 patient records and appointments overnight, Saturday into Sunday.

The trust first deployed the system in A&E and inpatients, before completing the roll out in its outpatients department yesterday.

The go-live is seen as the first step towards an electronic patient record system and Neal Jackson, Sheffield Children’s senior IT project manager, said it has required “extensive planning” and that the move went “according to plan”.

“IT staff have been on hand throughout to assist staff during the implementation and there has been minimal disruption to hospital activity.”

The trust went live with the PAS, bed management, A&E, waiting list management and master patient index modules of the Medway system.

Sheffield Children’s originally went out to tender for a new system in 2011, but then cancelled the procurement while it re-worked its EPR strategy.

 In July 2012 it went out to tender again, looking for a replacement PAS with “options for electronic patient record functionality.”

The trust then paused its procurement while it assessed CSC’s Lorenzo offer under the revised deal between the company and the Department of Health.  

However, Sheffield eventually decided against the system, saying it did not meet the trust’s needs as a specialist paediatric trust and chose its Medway PAS as a replacement system in May last year.

It originally aimed to deploy the system by February 2014, but decided to revise the go-live date to ensure it went smoothly. The support contract for its legacy PAS expired earlier this month, but McKesson agreed to offer extended support until go-live.

Sheffield Children’s is one of 12 out of a total of 26 Totalcare sites to choose Medway as its replacement PAS.

Isabel Hemmings, the trust’s chief operating officer, said she is grateful to the staff who have worked “so hard to ensure a smooth transition.”

“We are very pleased that Medway has now gone live and look forward to the benefits that the new system offers,” she said.

“Our IT department have been working closely with McKesson and staff across the Trust over the last 12 months to ensure that Medway met our needs as a specialist paediatric trust in terms of configuration and functionality.”

Paul Richards, managing director of McKesson and System C’s health & social care business, said: “We are delighted by our partnership with Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and to have successfully achieved yet another NHS Trust go-live with our Medway EPR system, which goes from strength to strength."

The trust hopes the system will speed up appointment booking at the hospital.