Liverpool trusts in £70m EPR tender

Three Liverpool trusts are jointly procuring a new, integrated electronic patient record system, worth up to £70m, to help them work collaboratively.

The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust and Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have released the tender.

It says they require a solution “that addresses the full scope of each trust’s incumbent PAS/EPR solution from the point of transition, [and] that may be further extended to cover the full scope of administrative and clinical functions."

These may include patient administration; clinical coding; information management reporting; A&E;  clinical documentation and care plans; requests and results reporting; medicines management; maternity; theatres and anaesthetics; critical care; electronic document management; and integration with other clinical solutions that are used by the trusts and other health providers across the local health economy.

Potential bidders will also be required to provide a full range of services such as for transition and deployment, solution support and maintenance, and solution monitoring.

The tender says the trusts will consider a range of hosting options, including local hosting at a trust site with local or remote management, or remote hosting and management.

The system must be flexible and able to be extended to cover any changes to the size or shape of the trusts, such as mergers or collaborations.

The tender states the estimated value of the contract at between £20m and £70m, with a contract length of ten years and two possible renewals.

The trusts reserve the right to place separate contracts with each or a combination of the trusts, or select different suppliers after separate evaluations, “in the event that a single contract with a single supplier does not provide the most economically advantageous solution for all trusts”.

Aintree is currently using System C’s Medway EPR, having gone live with an upgraded version in 2009.

Royal Liverpool deployed CSC’s iPM system under the National Programme for IT in 2007, while Liverpool Women’s is using the Meditech EPR.

In a joint statement, the three trusts told EHI the aim of the project is to “legitimately share patient data across the three trusts to improve patient care and safety across Liverpool”.

“We have embarked on the procurement process to identify suppliers who could provide an EPR system to meet our requirements. The EPR system will hold the patient record electronically and will be introduced using a phased approach over the coming years.”

The trusts said the EPR tender is also part of the Healthy Liverpool strategy outlined by NHS Liverpool Clinical Commissioning Group, “the aim of which is to deliver a patient-centred healthcare service to the people of the city, and to improve communications between trusts for those patients who receive care from more than one organisation”.

The EPR will also help the trusts to meet health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s challenge to become paperless by 2018. Registrations of interest for the tender must be submitted by 11 December.