Wye Valley delays IMS Maxims EPR go-live

A West Midlands trust has delayed its IMS Maxims electronic patient record (EPR) deployment by several months.

Wye Valley NHS Trust has pushed its go-live date back from 26 March to 17 July 2017 due to parts of the technology not being developed and tested in time, according to its March board papers.

A spokesman for Wye Valley said the go-live date was rescheduled “to allow additional clinical functionality to be developed”.

“This added functionality required further testing to ensure that the system is robust, fit for purpose and meets the requirements of the trust.”

The board papers said that “testing remains challenging even with the new timescale”.

The spokesman added that the trust and supplier have allocated additional resources to testing.

“There is also enhanced reporting to the programme board to ensure this additional work is delivered within scope and in the allocated timeframe.”

The board papers said that order communications will go live shortly after the July go-live date. The papers also suggested concern around staff training on the new system.

“The volume and complexity of training must not be underestimated”, the papers said.

The trust’s risk register had previously stated a delay could lead to incurring monthly costs of £300,000 to cover staff and supplier contracts and extending agreements.

The trust, which provides both community and acute care, did not specify how it was offsetting the risks associated with an EPR implementation delay.

The latest board papers say the EPR expenditure in February was £187,000.

Jacinta Ni Suaird, product director at IMS Maxims, said in a statement to Digital Health News that the additional functionality included a patient tracking tool and community module to support resource management and caseload planning for district nurses.

“We are working closely with Wye Valley NHS Trust on the readiness for phase one deployment of Maxims”, she said.

Wye Valley was the second trust in the country to choose IMS Maxims EPR in August 2015.

Digital Health News reported the trust signed a £15 million five year deal for the software, which replaced CSC’s i.PM.

Wye Valley was recently nominated as a global digital exemplar fast follower by fellow IMS Maxims trust, Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust.

The 16 selected GDE acute trusts are supposed to develop a “blueprint that can be deployed to other hospitals”, according to NHS England’s ‘Next Steps on the NHS Five Year Forward View’ released last month.

The fast followers would deploy in parallel to the GDEs, the report said.