Cerner live in Croydon community

Cerner Millennium is live in 12 community services at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust.

EHI reported last month that the combined acute and community care provider went live with the electronic patient record system on 30 September.

Millennium was introduced in a phased approach over three days, starting in the emergency and inpatient departments.

“This enabled the implementation team to ensure that the system was working as expected, prior to introducing it in another part of the trust’s services,” a Croydon spokesperson said.

“Millennium is being used to record information on a number of trust activities including clinical records and treatment plans for in and outpatients, ordering diagnostics and receiving results, appointment scheduling and bed-state.”

The deployment is the first National Programme for IT implementation of the system by BT since North Bristol NHS Trust went live in December 2011. Croydon is also the first trust to implement the system across its community services.

The 12 community services using Millennium include: adult physiotherapy; adult speech and language therapy; dietetics; pulmonary rehab; and stroke rehab.

“One major benefit for patients and staff is that patient’s records will be available to all clinicians in the trust and in many community services, which means that all staff have access to up-to-date information wherever they are working,” the spokesperson said.

Croydon is also looking to introduce medicines management next year.

Croydon Healthcare, which employs more than 600 clinicians in 30 services, had been planning to go-live with Millennium towards the end of 2012, but deployment was delayed.

Other go-lives of Cerner in London that were due to be implemented next year have been put back until 2014.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust deployed the first module of its Millennium project – order communications – as part of NPfIT in September 2011. It was planning the next phase of its roll-out, the patient administration system and maternity, for Spring 2013, but this will not go ahead until 2014.

The go-live of Cerner Millennium at South London Healthcare NHS Trust’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital was also planned for 2013, but nowlooks likely to go ahead next March. The hospital is being merged with Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust, which plans to deploy Millennium next September.

When asked about Cerner roll-out plans for 2014, a BT spokesperson said: “BT remains committed to the successful delivery of our local service provider contract to transform the way patient care is delivered in London and the South of England.

“We work closely with the Health and Social Care Information Centre and trusts to ensure Cerner deployments go live successfully and at an appropriate time.”