Milton Keynes MP asks when Millennium will be fixed

Reports of missing patient records resulting from the new Cerner Millennium system at Milton Keynes NHS Trust have led local Member of Parliament, Mark Lancaster, to write to the Health Secretary to ask when the Care Records System at the trust will be "fit for purpose".

The system has been provided by local service provider Fujitsu as part of the £12.4bn NHS National Programme for IT but has been dogged by problems including clinic lists not being available, patient notes being lost or unavailable and problems with reporting around key areas such as 18-week waits. One senior clinician from the trust described the situation in outpatients as "a nightmare".

These problems prompted 79 front line staff at the trust to write an open letter at the beginning of the month stating the system was not fit for purpose and calling for further deployments to be halted.

The MP’s letter to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt came in the same week that local paper, Milton Keynes News, reported on the experiences of patients who had suffered the consequences of lost records.

One patient, Michael Rooney, who suffers from glaucoma and relies on regular treatment at the hospital, told the paper: "For about five weeks now they’ve been unable to find my notes.

"The first time, they said you must come back in five weeks but when I did they said they hadn’t found my notes. I’ll be blind by the time they find them."

He added: "My wife was in intensive care and the doctor said he was glad he knew her because he couldn’t find her notes either."

Lancaster said of the ongoing problems at the trust: "Despite patient service suffering it appears that no substantive action has yet taken place, this is absolutely unacceptable and why I have to resort to raising the issue in parliament today."

In a written parliamentary question the MP asks the Health Secretary to detail "what steps are being taken to ensure that the Care Records Service computer system at Milton Keynes hospital is fit for purpose; and when this work will be complete".

Responding on behalf of Hewitt, health minister Caroline Flint replied in a Parliamentary answer: "Urgent and priority action is being taken to manage resolution of the operational difficulties which have been experienced with the new acute patient administration system (PAS) at Milton Keynes general hospital national health service trust since it went live on 24 February."

She said that a team from Fujitsu and Cerner were now working daily at the trust to resolve the problems being experienced. "Progress in tackling and overcoming the problems which have arisen, the majority of which have already been resolved, is being monitored daily."

The minister added that the senior deployment manager for the south of England from the Department of Health agency Connecting for Health is currently being "stationed permanently on site to ensure the work of the Fujitsu/Cerner team is completed to the satisfaction of the trust", and managed through to resolution.

"Work that is now in hand is likely to result in effective operation of the PAS system within the next two to three weeks," predicted the minister.

Commenting on the problems at the trust earlier this month the DH agency CfH said "It is clear that there are some issues at the trust which need immediate attention and we share their disappointment that they have experienced these problems. Ensuring this is resolved and normal service is resumed is a top priority."

Problems with the Millennium system have also been reported at earlier NHS sites in the south, particularly at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.

The next site due to go live in the South is understood to be East Sussex. No sites have yet gone live with Cerner delivered by BT in London.

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79 Milton Keynes staff say Millennium "not fit for purpose"