Doncaster delays PAS go-live

Doncaster and Bassetlaw Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has delayed the go-live of its CaMIS patient administration system until autumn.

The trust was due to go live with the PAS from Ascribe earlier this month and the Symphony A&E system from the same supplier in April. However, it has put back the deployment dates while it continues testing.

Steve Parsons, the trust’s deputy director of information and communications technology, told EHI that following the testing of the transfer of patient details, “a checkpoint review has highlighted a number of areas where additional work and decisions are required to get the best from the new PAS.”

“This has taken longer than in the original plan and has made us review and extend the length of time required to transfer other information such as outpatient appointments, waiting lists and 18 weeks information to maximise the effectiveness of the new system.”

The trust currently runs the legacy Totalcare PAS from McKesson for which a national support contract expired in March this year.

However, McKesson has agreed to extend the support until the trust is ready to deploy the new system. Doncaster will use lessons learnt from other trusts to help get ready for the go-live.

“Whilst we had hoped to go live earlier, the PAS project board unanimously recommended the approach of ensuring that testing is robust before we go live with such a major system for the trust, ensuring patients are booked and managed safely in the system,” said Parsons.

“The implementation will take longer than originally planned but from learning the lessons from other trusts the additional time spent preparing is a very worthwhile investment.”

The PAS and A&E deployment is part of Doncaster’s iHospital programme, which is working towards a complete electronic patient record system and a “paper-lite” hospital.

The trust received £6m for the iHospital programme from NHS England’s ‘Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards: Technology Fund’.

“Following confirmation of the award, the plans have been activated, procurements have been undertaken and business cases for electronic document management , infrastructure and electronic whiteboards are working through the trust’s governance process,” said Parsons.

Doncaster is working with US company Brocade on a new network infrastructure ahead of the PAS and A&E deployments. This also includes deploying a virtual desktop from VMware, starting in A&E, giving clinicians the ability to access their desktops from any machine using their smartcards.

The trust is also looking into a mobile device management system from Airwatch, which was recently bought by VMware.