Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has decided to take additional time before going live with a big bang implementation of Cerner Millennium.
The system, which is being delivered by University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre (UPMC) outside the National Programme for IT in the NHS, had been due to go-live over the August Bank Holiday. Sources close to the project indicate that data migration has been challenging.
The trust told E-Health Insider that although technical completion had been reached, it had decided to take more time to ensure all the operational implications of the implementation were “understood”.
The trust says it now aims to go-live with the new system, which includes patient administration and advanced clinical functionality, across all its hospitals by the end of the calendar year. However, it says it will take more time if required.
David Allison, the trust’s business operations and development director, and the man responsible for the programme, said: “The trust reached technical completion by the end of August. But I wanted to be clear we understood operational implications of go-live.”
Allison added: “As far as I am concerned we are not working to a specific date but a quality standard.” He described the additional time being taken as a “necessary extra quality check” on Newcastle’s eRecord project.
“The eRecord project team’s focus has been on getting to technical implementation; but there is a big difference between a process you can go live with and one that will be a success.”
The trust has been working with its partners on a complex data migration, which is now said to be complete but which has not been without problems.
However, Allison said Newcastle also wanted to understand what impact the system might have on key operational processes. “I’m very keen to understand what the impact would be operationally for 18-week waits and Choose and Book.”
He stressed that these business critical areas offered very little margin for manoeuvre or error. “On 18-week waits there’s not a lot of flexibility.”
He said the experience of Royal Free and Barts and the London, which went live with NPfIT implementations of Cerner Millennium last year, showed the financial and operational problems that could result if such areas weren’t absolutely right.
“We’ve had to put a lot of effort into ensuring it [Cerner Millennium] supports the business processes of the NHS and ensuring the operational implications are understood,” Allison said.
He acknowledged, however, that with staff trained on the new system and data migrated there was an optimal period for a go-live after which “knowledge decay” would occur and a lot of repeat training and preparation would be required.
Asked when he would be recommending to the board that the full go-live should occur, Allison said: “In this calendar year is when is in my head.” But he added: “If we find there is a major showstopper we could take more time.”
He added: “What becomes clear as you start these types of project is that they start being seen as an IT programme. But it becomes clear this us about changing business processes and getting people supported through use of technology.”
Newcastle is one of the largest foundation trusts in the country, with 2,000 beds across a number of sites including the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Freeman Hospital, and Newcastle General Hospital. The planned ‘big bang’ go-live will see 4,000 of the trust’s 12,000 staff use the system in the first instance.
The full implementation covers: patient administration, accident and emergency, results review and orders, medication orders, theatre (operating room) management, and pharmacy management systems.
Allison said the relationship with UPMC and Cerner has been positive. “We’ve had a lot of support from UPMC and Cerner. They know how important this is to their reputation in the UK.”
He added that Newcastle aimed to be an “exemplar” and this would necessarily take time. “This trust is a huge, complex organisation. We want to make sure this project is done right.”
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