Clinicians working at North Bristol NHS Trust have expressed concern about disruption to patient care, which they say is caused by appointment problems following the go-live of a new Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system.
Reported problems include patients being booked into non-existent clinic appointments or not being told about scheduled operations, resulting in some operations being cancelled.
Ehealth Insider understands that some of the problems relate to the way the trust configured the EPR system; including setting up dummy clinics for which appointment letters were subsequently sent out.
In a regional BBC news report, aired on Monday evening, anonymous hospital clinicians called the implementation a “complete shambles” and said it represented a “potential danger” to patients.
According to the BBC report, the problems meant patients were being booked for impossible appointment times, such as 12.05 am, and quoted correspondence saying staff and the system were both on the “verge of meltdown."
Martin Bell, director of IM&T at the trust, confirmed to EHI that North Bristol had experienced some “unexpected problems” in the past few weeks with some of the outpatient appointments and theatre lists.
Bell stressed, however, that patient safety had not been compromised and that this continued to be the top priority.
He said the problems were not down to the software itself, but due to “implementation and data migration difficulties in some clinics."
“Our information management and technology team, supported by our suppliers BT and Cerner, have been working very hard to sort out any initial issues as quickly as possible and we are already seeing improvements,” he said.
“Many wards, our two minor injuries units and the Emergency Department, are successfully using the new system." The trust is one of the largest in the South of England, with more than 1,000 beds.
EHI understands that as part of the Millennium implementation, dummy clinics were set up. Patients were then sent appointment letters for these clinics in error.
EHI also understands that some patients had also not turned up for scheduled operations because they had not been informed about the booking.
Bell apologised to patients who had been “inconvenienced during this transition period” and said staff had shown real dedication to continue to deliver patient care.
“We firmly believe that the new system, once fully implemented, will improve services for our patients and provide real value,” he said.
A £69m contract for BT to deliver Cerner Millennium to three new, or ‘greenfield’ sites in the South of England was agreed in April 2010, under the auspices of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
North Bristol was the last of these three sites to go-live with the system in December last year.
It followed Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, which went live a week earlier, and Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust, which was the first to go-live in July.
Cerner said it was working closely with North Bristol and BT on the recent implementation of Millennium.
“In complex and large deployments, especially when migrating from two different systems, it is always anticipated that it would take time for the new system to bed-in,” it said in a statement.
“Across much of the trust, the deployment has worked well. However, this is a major change management project and there have been some difficulties with outpatient appointments.
“Although this is not a problem with the software, Cerner is working in partnership with BT and trust staff to resolve any issue as quickly as possible.”