Northumbria live with Silverlink

Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with its Silverlink patient administration system.

The system, which was deployed in the beginning of the year, replaces the trust’s legacy McKesson Totalcare PAS, which the trust has used for 17 years.

Along with the implementation of the PAS, the trust has introduced new trust-wide data standards to ensure all aspects of patient activity are coded accurately.

Northumbria claims these standards go beyond the national requirements and play an “essential role in ensuring appropriate patient care”.

Northumbria selected the Silverlink PAS from Stalis in 2011 and Mark Thomas, director of health informatics at the trust, said that the project had demanded a lot of work.

“The implementation involved a lot of planning and represented a significant change for many staff, especially those who have been using the old system since it was put in place,” he said.

“We pride ourselves on the quality of our data and have been recognised nationally for our work in this area.

“High quality data is an essential part of delivering high quality and safe patient care and we place great emphasis on making sure we capture robust data so that we can continuously review and improve our services for patients.”

Northumbria originally went out to tender for an interim PAS in 2006, while it waited for the National Programme for IT to deliver. It then stopped the procurement when it was promised it would be the next in line for Lorenzo.

However, after it became clear that this was unlikely to happen in the near future, the trust went out to tender again in 2010 and subsequently awarded the contract to Stalis in December 2011.

The seven year contract also includes the use of Stalis’ CareXML product for the data migration and business intelligence systems.

The trust hopes the new PAS will improve the recording of patient data across the hospital, including A&E, inpatients and outpatient clinics.

“I think we will very soon realise the benefits of the new system both for users and our patients,” said Thomas.