Patients complain about disruption following new EPR in Sheffield

Patients have complained about disruption to outpatients bookings and waiting lists following the introduction of  a new electronic patient record (EPR) system at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The trust went live with its £85 million Oracle Cerner EPR in July 2025, following an eight month delay to deal with “outstanding issues” around system and organisational readiness.

Following the go live, Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East, wrote to Kirsten Major, chief executive of the trust, stating that constituents had “serious concerns about an ongoing failure in the hospital’s digital patient records system that has persisted for a number of weeks”.

“According to these reports – which specifically mention cardiology and potentially other departments – the trust’s electronic system has been ‘down’ or malfunctioning in a way that waiting list data and patient records have gone missing or become inaccessible.

“In one case a patient was informed by staff that the cardiology department no longer knows who is on their waiting list due to this system issue.

“Understandably, this situation is causing anxiety to patients who are unsure if they remain in the queue for treatment or have ‘fallen off’ the list through no fault of their own,” the letter says.

Responding to the concerns, Major told Digital Health News: “A change of this magnitude and scale is bound to have some initial issues to resolve and we have had disruption to some of our outpatient appointment booking processes and correspondence.

“We picked this up very quickly and thanks to the amazing work of our staff many of the clinics affected have already been corrected, and we have a programme of work to complete the remainder as quickly as possible to limit any impact on existing waiting times.

“Our clinical teams are continuing to triage and prioritise the most urgent appointments as normal, and all patients will be contacted as soon as their appointment is ready to be scheduled in line with the waiting time for that clinic or service.”

She confirmed the new system had not ‘gone down’ and that the trust had saved a copy of the information in the old system prior to the system switchover, which means that it has not lost any data and can still cross check our records, if needed in the future.

“We also still have the previous paper patient records available to view,” she added.

Major said that the new EPR “is more clinically advanced” than the old system and inpatient and emergency care staff were “already seeing benefits since its introduction”.

“For example, the new system brings together many aspects of our patients’ information into one place rather than being stored in different systems which may not always be visible to everyone involved in their care.

“This also means that decisions can be based on the latest information available. It also brings the potential for other trusts in South Yorkshire to have the same system so that we can deliver truly joined up care with a single patient record,” Major said.