Lewisham confirms Cerner deployment

Lewisham Healthcare NHS Trust will deploy Cerner’s electronic patient record system across its hospital and community health services.

EHI reported last August that the south London trust had picked Cerner to supply its Millennium EPR ahead of InterSystems and Cambio.

The trust’s board papers suggest the delay in signing off the project was related to the Trust Special Administrator process at South London Healthcare NHS Trust, which involves SLHT’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital being merged with Lewisham.

This is Cerner’s first EPR contract win in the NHS since Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust signed a deal with University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre to deliver Millennium in mid-2009.

A statement from the company said a range of clinical solutions will be deployed at Lewisham alongside the patient administration system. The deployment plan was still under discussion so no go-live dates could be given.

According to a tender document released in November 2011, the EPR will include; order communications and results reporting; e-prescribing and medicines management; clinical documentation; social and medical alerting; care pathway workflow, clinical decision support and clinical analysis tools.

A community clinical and administrative system was an optional module, which the trust has also chosen to deploy.

“Cerner will work with the trust to develop a tailored solution integrating acute and community records, including those for community child health,” a Cerner statement said.

Lewisham is one of the iSoft 7 trusts that last year signed a four-year extension with CSC for the iSoft PAS.

The original EPR tender said the trust was procuring a patient master index and that a replacement acute PAS and enterprise-wide scheduling would be part of an optional procurement. Cerner confirmed that the trust would be implementing the Millennium PAS.

Lewisham’s medical director Jane Linsell described the announcement as a major step forward in the trust’s plans to use information and technology to improve care for patients.

“It will relieve administrative burdens on staff and support quicker, more informed clinical decisions. Our patients deserve the best care available and this announcement ensures they continue to benefit from world-leading technology,” she added.

A finance report presented to Lewisham’s March board meeting says the TSA process at SLHT had delayed capital expenditure by the trust and £2.4m would be carried forward to next year to fund the EPR and automated dispensing system.

The finance committee meeting minutes for Janaury say NHS London had approved the EPR business case, but “a considerable amount of work would be needed to ensure that the planned benefits of EPR were realised”.

In February, the finance committee said it was working to understand the impact of the potential merger with QEH on the EPR programme.

SLHT plans to deploy Millennium at its Queen Elizabeth Hospital site this summer.

Emil Peters, Cerner’s new vice-president and general manager for the UK and Ireland, said Millennium would help improve the quality, safety and affordability of care in Lewisham.

“As the NHS seeks to become paperless by 2018, selecting the right electronic patient record is one of the biggest single decisions a trust will face,” he added.

“We look forward to working with the trust to make that vision a reality for staff and patients.”