St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust has told E-health Insider that it will delay its implementation of Cerner Millennium until March 2010.
The trust had previously been working to an improbable 21 December deadline; just four days before Christmas Day, when many trust staff will be on holiday.
By taking more time, the trust says it will have more time to prepare for the move.
“This move is fully supported by the NHS London Programme for IT (LPfIT) and BT," it said in a statement issued to EHI.
"The programme is a major change project for St George’s and the decision to reschedule will allow the trust to ensure that staff are even better prepared and that it delivers maximum benefit to patients.”
The trust’s chief operating officer Patrick Mitchell said the deployment was critical to the development of patient services.
“Therefore, we are doing everything necessary to ensure the most efficient transition from our current systems to the new systems," he said.
"This has underpinned our decision to reschedule deployment until March 2010, allowing additional time to prepare and deliver the programme successfully with the best possible outcome for staff and patients.”
Kevin Jarrold, chief information officer and programme director, NHS London Programme for IT, said: “We fully support St George’s decision to take additional time to fully prepare for the implementation of Cerner Millennium.
"The trust recognises that IT is an enabler of transformation and change so it is important to get it right. We will continue to work closely with the trust to provide any support it needs in its preparations for go-live.”
The new Cerner Millennium electronic patient record system, to be provided by BT under the National Programme for IT in the NHS, will replace an obsolete, 23-year old iSoft patient administration system.
The trust first approved a business case to implement Cerner in November 2007, but put off the move following the severe difficulties experienced by both Barts and the London and the Royal Free Hampstead NHS trusts when they went live with Millennium last June.