Bury goes live with first Lorenzo PAS

E-Health Insider has learned that NHS Bury has gone-live with Lorenzo Release 1.9, the first version of the software to include native patient administration functionality.

The trust went live with the new system, after switching off its old PAS, this morning.

NHS Bury is the first trust to go-live with Lorenzo Release 1.9. Until now, CSC and iSoft have only provided NHS trusts with Release 1 of the Lorenzo software, which provides limited clinical tools, and runs on top of an existing PAS. Release 1.9 for the first time includes a native Lorenzo PAS.

At the beginning of October, the trust outlined the scope of Lorenzo claiming that it will “implement Lorenzo Regional Care Release 1.9 in November, when it will migrate off its current patient administration system.”

A statement issued by NHS National Programme for IT in Greater Manchester, said: “NHS Bury is pleased to announce that, on Tuesday 3rd November, Lorenzo Regional Care Release 1.9 (Care Management) was successfully deployed in the Trust.

“Almost 600 clinical and administrative staff across 31 community services are now using the system to manage their administrative tasks including booking appointments, recording contacts and managing casenotes.

“The migration from the trust’s previous patient administration system, iPM, took place over the weekend following extensive testing by the Trust, NHS North West, NHS Connecting for Health and local service provider CSC.”

In April, director general of informatics Christine Connelly set deadlines for local service providers, CSC and BT, to achieve “significant” progress with the ‘strategic’ systems they are due to deliver.

She said that CSC must get iSoft’s Lorenzo into a care setting by November and “working smoothly” in an acute setting by March.

A successful go live of Lorenzo 1.9 at Bury is widely seen as an essential step before a subsequent go-live at University Hospitals of Morecombe Bay by the end of March.

According to the trust, the project team is now preparing for the phased roll out of Lorenzo electronic clinical documentation functionality to services that is due to start early next year.

Ann Halpin, associate director of IM&T, at Bury said: “Following months of preparation, we are delighted that Lorenzo Regional Care is now in place. During the deployment, our priority has always been to ensure that the system supports our staff in providing high quality care for our patients.

“We are confident that Lorenzo Regional Care is the best solution to enable us to share information swiftly and securely between services and, in time, with other organisations. As more Trusts deploy the system we will start to realise the full benefits that the NHS Care Records Service will bring for our staff and patients.”