East Kent deploys Allscripts’ Sunrise PAS

East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with a new patient administration system (PAS).

The trust switched to AllScripts’ system in a three-day operation at the start of October. According to Digital Health Intelligence, the trust previously had a PAS system from DXC Technology.

The project involved migrating 42 million records from one system to the other.

Andy Barker, IT director at East Kent Hospitals, said: “An enormous amount of work by Allscripts and trust staff ensured the change-over ran as smoothly as we could hope for. This was important to ensure continuity of care and patient safety. It went well, with no significant impact on trust operations.

“Deploying a new PAS is a major undertaking, but our old system was outdated and we had to change it to move onto the next stage of our IT development. The Allscripts PAS gives us the platform to move forward with an electronic patient record.”

East Kent Hospitals ran a joint procurement for a new PAS with neighbouring Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in 2015, as part of the South Acute Programme.

This was set up to give providers in the south of England access to central funding for technology, following the end of the ill-fated National Programme for IT.

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells went live with the PAS a year ago and announced earlier this year that it would also be deploying Allscripts’ EPR system.

Steve Brain, vice president and UK managing director, Allscripts, said: “This was an exceptionally smooth and calm go-live. That was a tribute to the Allscripts team at East Kent, and also to the trust, which worked hard to make sure that its clinical staff owned the transition.

“We now look forward to working with both East Kent and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells on EPR deployments that will deliver significant benefits to their clinicians and patients.”

Digital Health News reported in December 2016 how the deployment at East Kent had been delayed, with the risk of disruption to services being cited as the reason.