Morecambe plans next steps with Lorenzo

University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust plans to go live with Lorenzo’s maternity system and e-prescribing over the next few months.

The trust, which began to implement the first stages of CSC’s electronic patient record system in 2010, is looking to have full EPR functionality in 15 months.

Speaking at the NHS Productivity conference in Harrogate, director of service and commercial development Patrick McGahon said it was going to rapidly roll-out new Lorenzo functions over the coming months.

“Our priority is to go live with patient prescribing in May and we are working on developing a maternity model which we hope to go live with before summer,” he said.

Morecambe Bay is currently carrying out an internal investigation into “failings” in maternity services at the trust following the death of a baby in 2008.

McGahon said he was aware that the trust had struggled with mortality rates, but that it was on its way up, partly due to Lorenzo. He added that this was the perfect time to launch the maternity system.

“Because of our problems with maternity, we have found that we are in a place to define how to do this.”

The trust, which has become Lorenzo’s key acute reference site in the UK, ran into numerous issues during implementation of the system.

Although it had taken longer to get Lorenzo working than originally hoped, McGahon believed the time and effort the trust put in had been worth it, adding that the latest roll-outs had “gone smoothly."

Dr Colin Brown, the trust’s clinical lead on the project, said the next step was to get Lorenzo working on mobile and becoming more interoperable.

“We have to look at how it will operate with other systems both inside the trust and out. We’ve done some work around mobility issues and some proof of concept work around iPads,” he said.

“One of the key components of the maternity model we’re launching in a few months’ time is that community midwives will be working with digital pens to capture information and load that into Lorenzo.”

The trust is already using the system to send discharge letters to GPs.

“We have the capability to deliver electronic discharge letters to GPs within 24 hours which has been mandated, so now, no paper letter should be issued from the trust,” said Brown.

Lorenzo functionalities already implemented at Morecambe Bay include the; patient administration system, emergency care, immediate discharge summary, inpatients, outpatients, letters, pathology results, radiology, endoscopy, and diabetic screening.