Health trust abandons NHS care record upgrade
Uncertainty sees Bath jump ship
By Nick Heath
Published: 22 July 2008 17:15 BST
A health trust serving more than 500,000 people said it has pulled out of the national NHS IT electronic care record programme because it has lost confidence in the project following the departure of key supplier Fujitsu.
The Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust (RUH) has stopped the deployment of the Cerner Millennium electronic care records system - part of the £12.7bn national NHS IT modernisation programme.
The Trust said it terminated the implementation because it had lost confidence in the delivery of the system following Fujitsu's exit as the provider delivering the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the south of England.
Fujitsu will continue to deliver the system in the south until it departs in November and health authorities are now in negotiations with Bath about whether it will use its own provider to implement the Millennium care records system or turn to other NPfIT providers, BT or CSC.
The RUH provides acute treatment and care for a catchment population of around 500,000 people in Bath, and the surrounding towns and villages in north east Somerset and western Wiltshire.
The delivery of the NPfIT has been beset by problems, with a parliamentary committee hearing earlier this year that the Lorenzo care record system was still to go live six years into the programme.
A spokesman for the Southern Programme for IT confirmed that "the deployment of Millennium is now not taking place" in RUH.
He said that if the Bath Trust decided to pick its own supplier from a list of approved providers to deliver the system it would have to be funded locally.
The spokesman added that negotiations were continuing between central health authorities and the trust and that he was confident the work already undertaken by Fujitsu would be able to be built on for any future delivery of a care record system.
No date has been set for resuming the implementation of the system.
A spokeswoman for RUH said: "Following the termination of the contract between the NHS and Fujitsu, and subsequent meetings between the trust, Fujitsu, Cerner and Connecting for Health, the assessment of the RUH trust board was that it did not have sufficient confidence in the level of support that it would receive from the suppliers, at and beyond the go-live period, to proceed with the implementation of Millennium."
ivan burit
Yesterday while at St. Bartholomews at the recieption desk, i noticed a "engineer type techie" overseeing the 2 deskstaff booking patients into and outof outpatients.
My consultant, a brilliently, nice, young female Doctor, one who actually cares, went into sudden annoyance at the way the "new" inhouse computor system was failing to perform such a simple task asto print out 3 little barcode stickers for my blood test...
the barcode holds my information...so they say....
These "new" computor systems have been online for more than 6 months, and despite having "techie" types about, the system still does not work well yet...
How many patients like me have been failed by the system, not the Doctors i wonder....
Yesterday i actually got a printed out letter for my next appointment..
The last time all i got was a hand written bit of paper..
So is the "new" system working yet.........well not really is it......
But mine and many others with simular llnesses are still returning for aftercare at the Best Hospital of its type in the country.
Its just a shame its "new" computor system was not yet upto scratch.....
amenity2
I bet the firm that installed the computer system would have screamed if they had been paid in duff pound notes.
The NHS should send their buyers on a buying course that shows them how to draw up a contract.
ivan burit
The NHS should send their buyers on a buying course that shows them how to draw up a contract.
trouble is amenity, they would send them to golden shores seminars, paid for by the companies who want to sell them the stuff..
