Dudley picks Allscripts EPR in £32 million deal

Allscripts will develop the new electronic patient record for The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust in a multi-million-pound deal.

As part of a £32 million ten-year ‘digital trust’ programme, the trust will deploy the Allscripts Sunrise Clinical Wrapper. Functionality will include clinical documentation, electronic prescribing, order communications, test results and clinical correspondence, among other features.

Mark Stanton, chief information officer at the trust, said Sunrise “emerged as a clear fit” for Dudley.

He said the project will begin in January 2016. The first phase will go live in February 2018 and the roll-out should be completed by June 2018.

The tender released in April, said the tender was worth £10.5 million over ten years. In needed to cover a “clinical wrap EPR solution and associate services”

Dudley already has an Allscripts patient administration system, and Stanton confirmed that it will be retained. “We will follow the Allscripts Roadmap for closer integration between the PAS and clinical wrapper”, he said.

The Sunrise EPR is used in several other English trusts including Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust, Liverpool Heart and Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust.

Paul Harrison, acting chief executive at Dudley, described the digital trust programme in a statement as “the biggest investment in IT that the trust has ever made”.

Jane Dale, chief clinical information officer at Dudley, said the benefits to the trust will be “enormous”. It will also allow for the “relevant clinical information to be shared with the patient, their GP and other organisations responsible for looking after patients”, she said.

Digital Health Intelligence anaylsis suggests that as well as a significant contract in its own right, the choice of Allscripts changes the digital dynamic in the trust’s sustainbility and transformation plan area, the Black Country STP.

The two mental health trusts in the STP are already Allscripts customers. Of the other three acute trusts, two of which currently use CSC systems, two are likely to review their EPR strategy in the next twelve months.

Overall, the Black Country STP focuses on interoperability of services and systems. The Allscripts win in Dudley has the potential to open the door to digital standardisation across the STP.

Previously, Dudley was contracted with an external company for the provision of IT service as part of a private finance deal.

In 2002, the trust signed an 18-year deal with Siemens Healthcare via Summit Healthcare which covered the management of the trust’s core infrastructure, operating systems, and hardware.

The agreement was meant to see the trust  move to a ‘level three’ electronic patient record, as defined by the national Information for Health strategy in 1998, and become a flagship for Siemens’ Soarian clinical software.

Instead, in 2010 a strategic review concluded that its implementation had been ‘patchy’, with many departments sticking with their own arrangements, or coming up with local work-arounds.

In December 2014 the contract was terminated with the mutual consent of all parties.

Stanton said the last two years have been sent ensuring “that we have selected the right system”.

Dudley serves a population of about 450,000 people from three hospital sites in the Black Country and West Midlands region.

Steve Brain, managing director, Allscripts said: “Allscripts are committed to a strategic partnership with Dudley that will see the digital trust deliver improved patient care for the Black Country.”

Digital Health Intelligence: holds information on the clinical systems installed at trusts across the UK and uses this to calculate a Clinical Digital Maturity Index score. The Dudley Group Foundation Trust ranks 106 out of 153, with a score of 67. (requires log-in).