Tameside Lorenzo go-live next month

Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust will be the first to go-live with Lorenzo under an interim deal between CSC and the Department of Health, next month.

It will be the first deployment of the electronic patient record system since Humber NHS Foundation Trust went live with Lorenzo in May last year, under CSC’s exclusive contract as IT provider in the North, Midlands and East of England.

Eight trusts are signed up to take the system under an interim deal agreed with the DH last September, which removed CSC’s exclusive right, but promised central funding for software and deployment if a trust could develop a “robust business case” for taking the system.

A paper being presented to Tameside’s September board meeting today says it will replace its Medway PAS from System C, a McKesson company, with the Lorenzo EPR in a fortnight.

“We are exceptionally pleased to report that the initial 18-month implementation has proceeded to plan and we remain on course for go-live on 7 October 2013,” it says.

“Significant challenges remain in the coming weeks and months ahead, as this is only the first step in a journey of significant transformational change enabled by a modern interconnected EPR.”

CSC was the local service provider for the NME under the National Programme for IT, but after the fourth ‘early adopter’ of its EPR pulled out in 2011, the company was locked in a long renegotiation of the contract.

Under the revised deal, trusts must be approved to take Lorenzo by the CSC LSP Programme Board.

In September last year, Tameside was the first to confirm its intention to take the EPR and it has spent more than £2.3m in implementation costs so far.

The trust board minutes say the spend is well within funding limits agreed with the Health and Social Care Information Centre, but that because it is the first to go-live under the interim agreement, there have been some issues around costs.

“Hence, the trust’s pathfinder status created some initial cash pressure as these processes were worked out. However, the payment process now appears to be operating smoothly,” say the minutes.

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust have also had business cases approved by the NME Programme Board to take Lorenzo.

Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust  have also confirmed their intention to take CSC’s EPR.

Hull and East Yorkshire plans to go-live with the system in September 2014 and Barnsley hopes to go-live before March 2014 when the support contract for its current McKesson Totalcare patient administration system expires.

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust, which also runs a McKesson legacy PAS, is also expected to go-live before the end of March next year.