East Kent gets £6m for Allscripts

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust has received £6 million in central funding to support the implementation of Allscripts’ patient administration system and a maternity system from EuroKing.

Speaking to Digital Health News, East Kent's chief information officer Andy Barker said the trust will begin to implement the PAS this summer with the aim of going live a year later, while the new maternity system is planned to be in place by the end of 2015.

He said the trust picked Allscripts because it had “all the things we are looking forward to using”. This includes an interactive white board, an information screen for patients and a self check-in facility.

East Kent Hospitals University picked the Allscripts PAS, which was developed by Oasis, which the company bought in July last year, as part of a collaborative procurement process with Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust.

Both trusts are part of the South Acute Programme, a group of 23 southern trusts which failed to receive a system through the National Programme for IT. Together, the trusts have attracted £80 million in central funding for investments in health IT, which they will match with £100 million in local investment. 

East Kent has received £6 million from this government pot of money. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells had not confirmed the amount of central funding it has received, but the original tender notice said the entire contract was worth £10 million to £40 million.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells chief operating officer Angela Gallagher said the trust is looking forward to enhancing the patient experience with the Allscripts PAS.

“The integrated workflow and the flexibility of the solution will enable our organisation to continually improve the efficiency of our care and make smarter decisions for our patients,” she said.

Barker was very positive about the experience of working with Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, saying it, “has been an ideal example of how trusts can work together”.

“There was good cooperation between a number of NHS organisations. The idea that this is a way of working in the future with multiple organisations cooperating together I think has worked really well.”

Digital Health News reported that the trusts had picked Allscripts as their preferred supplier in December last year, to replace legacy system Patient Care from iSoft (now CSC).

This is the first PAS contract that Allscripts has finalised after acquiring the Oasis system. The PAS, now known as Allscripts PAS, is already in place at several other trusts, including Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust and Medway NHS Foundation Trust, which went live in February this year.

The company was also awarded a place on the NHS Shared Business Services Clinical Information Systems Framework in April.