Warrington to deploy Lorenzo EPR

Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is set to deploy the Lorenzo electronic patient record system after successfully bidding for Department of Health funding to support the project.

The system, which is provided by CSC, will be implemented over the next few years across several locations in the trust including Warrington Hospital and Halton General Hospital in Runcorn. The first phase of the project is expected to go live at the end of 2015.

Cheshire-based Warrington and Halton has had plans to replace its current Meditech EPR system for some time, announcing in August 2012 that it wanted to overhaul its old patient administration system at an expected cost of £6 million.

These plans are now on course with the trust commenting that the introduction of Lorenzo will “see a significant shift away from paper-based records towards electronic records” by bringing together disparate pieces of information about a patient.

Dr Simon Constable, the trust’s medical director, said: “We need to give clinicians all the information they need, at all times, at all locations.

“Our current system does not allow us to join up all our patient records. The new electronic patient record system will enable all of a patient’s hospital health records to be available in one view, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Mel Pickup, the chief executive for Warrington and Halton Hospitals, added: “This new system will bring us bang up to date and staff and patients will benefit enormously from technology and information being much closer to the bedside or to outpatient consultations.”

CSC was originally meant to deploy Lorenzo across all trusts in North, Midlands and East of England as part of the National Programme for IT.

However, troubles with developing and then deploying the system led to a renegotiation of the contract between CSC and the government.

This removed the company’s exclusive rights to provide IT systems to trusts in the NME region, but made DH funding available to purchase Lorenzo for trusts that still wanted to go with the system if they provided a robust business case.

Warrington and Halton’s decision to go with Lorenzo means six trusts are now planning to deploy the system, while 13 have gone live since 2010.

The trusts that implemented Lorenzo as part of NPfIT and continue to use the system are: Birmingham Women's NHS Foundation Trust; Humber NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust.

NME trusts that have taken advantage of extra funding via the revised government contract and are currently using Lorenzo are: Barnsley Hospital Foundation Trust, Derby Hospitals Foundation Trust, George Eliot Hospital Trust, Ipswich Hospital Trust, Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust, South Warwickshire Foundation Trust, Tameside Hospital Trust and Walsall Healthcare Trusts.

NME trusts that are set to go live with Lorenzo in the coming year include Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust and Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, both of which are aiming for April, and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Outside the NME region, where trusts are unable to access DH funding, there has been more limited uptake of the system.  

Trusts that are planning to go with the system to handle patient records include the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and North Bristol NHS Trust, which is looking to replace its Cerner Millennium EPR.

Warrington and Halton has placed the modernisation of its IM&T capabilities as a central part of its five year strategic plan submitted in 2014.