Guy’s and St Thomas’ has ‘reporting issues’ with £450m Epic EPR

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust is using manual data extraction for key reporting tasks, owing to issues with its £450 million Epic electronic patient record (EPR) system.

A trust board paper, published on 29 January 2025, confirms that “there remain a number of reporting issues linked to the implementation of the Epic EPR system”, following its launch in October 2023.

The joint go-live of the Epic EPR at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts, delivered through the ‘Apollo’ programme, was the biggest go-live of Epic’s EPR in the world at that time.

Simultaneously, Synnovis, a pathology partnership between the two trusts and SYNLAB, went live with a new laboratory information management system powered by Epic, which consolidated the trusts’ multiple systems into one.

The board report says: “There remain a number of reporting issues linked to the implementation of the Epic electronic health record system which have led to temporary
gaps in assurance on quality of care across the organisation, for example around surgical site infection reporting.

“We are working with Epic to resolve these issues as quickly as possible, and in the meantime, to mitigate these risks, we are undertaking core mandatory reporting tasks usual manual data extraction.”

Elsewhere in the board paper it says: “Whilst, as had been expected, issues had arisen with how the system was operating, including with its ability to produce a full suite of reports, the benefits of Epic were already apparent to both staff and patients.

“These included a greater visibility and depth of patient information, enabling a more personalised approach to treatment, seamless sharing of information between healthcare
organisations, and greater interaction with patients through the MyChart app.”

A spokesperson for Epic told Digital Health News that it was working with Guy’s and St Thomas’ on timely and accurate reporting.”

“Every country—and every trust—has unique needs. We work closely with each of our customers to improve our software and refine workflows to support their needs and objectives.

“In our ongoing collaboration with GSTT, reporting has been a key focus area,” the spokesperson added.

A board report from the trust’s transformation and major programmes committee on the Apollo programme, said: “The committee agreed to formally close down the stabilisation phase and move to the optimisation phase.

“Business planning for 2025/26 would include a number of small changes to the structure and required posts that would drive the vital work to optimise the use of Epic.”

The trust is still recovering from the cyber attack against Synnovis in June 2024, which caused two cases of severe patient harm and 11 cases of moderate harm.

A board report from Ian Abbs, chief executive, at Guy’s and St Thomas’, says: “The trust’s operational performance had been significantly affected by the cyber attack and was behind the original plan agreed with NHS England in several areas, including treating the patients waiting longest for elective care.”

It adds that “in recent weeks, there had been performance improvements despite the continuing high demand for services.”