Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust looks set to be the second acute trust to implement Lorenzo Release 1.9 under the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
The trust, which is using iSoft’s iPM patient administration system, confirmed that it is due to go-live following the first implementation of R1.9 at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust in March.
It said that it will go-live with patient administration system functionality on 10 May 2010 for around 700 staff. Clinical modules including clinical documentation, requests and results and care plans will then be added over the following months.
According to a staff newsletter published in July 2009, the project “aimed to get the new system deployed and working on 7 December 2009.”
However, a trust spokesperson told E-Health Insider that the date was pushed back in advance of the go-live, following realignments to the national programme by NHS Connecting for Health.
Local service provider CSC and CfH say these realignments were made in the summer so the programme could focus on the trusts that needed to show “significant progress” is being made in deploying ‘strategic’ electronic record systems across the country.
Significant progress was defined by director general of informatics Christine Connelly last April CSC implementing Lorenzo R1.9 in any care setting by November 2009 and being on track to go-live in an acute trust by March 2010.
BT, the local service provider for London, had to get Cerner Millennium into another trust in the capital by last November.
EHI understand that a number of trusts have been affected by the rescheduling, including Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust and Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust.
In a statement, the Department of Health said: “There has been some re-planning of Lorenzo deployment dates to focus on the deadline for achieving significant progress around the implementation of electronic patient record systems in the acute sector.
“In line with our stated criteria we are working to implement Lorenzo R1.9 in an acute trust by the end of March 2010 and working collaboratively with trusts, our local service provider and the strategic health authorities across the North, Midlands and East of England to plan further roll-out of Lorenzo in a way that best meets the needs of the NHS.”
Although, CSC and CfH would not provide EHI with an updated schedule, CSC said that there have been no recent changes and they are “on track to deliver under the current plan.”
Links: iSoft
Opinion and analysis: Read more about the rescheduling in our news analysis, NME at the Gate.