Mental health trust opts for Lorenzo

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust will be the first mental health trust to take the Lorenzo electronic patient record system under the revised deal between the government and CSC.

The trust will be the ninth to take the electronic patient record under the deal that gives trusts central funding for deployment and service costs.

According to a short update on the local service provider programmes, presented to the Health and Social Care Information Centre board meeting this week, Norfolk and Suffolk had its second investment case to take the system approved by the CSC LSP Programme Board in January this year.

The paper says the trust plans to submit its project initiation document and its third and final Lorenzo Investment Case to the programme board shortly.

The trust already uses CSC’s iPM patient administration system, which it received as an ‘interim’ system as part of the National Programme for IT, along with three other systems.

It begun the scoping work for moving to a single system and a full EPR last year, and has been “exploring” the Lorenzo as a possible strategic fit since then.

Lorenzo was intended to be rolled out across the North, Midlands and East by NPfIT, but suffered from a series of development and deployment delays.

The government and CSC eventually signed an interim deal that removed the company’s exclusive rights to provide IT systems to the NME, in return for compensation from the DH, and an agreement from CSC not to pursue legal action.

That deal was finalised in October last year and made funding available for up to 22 trusts that still want to take the system. Barnsley Hospital NHS Trust was officially approved to take Lorenzo recently, taking the total count to nine.

Several trusts have gone live with Lorenzo last three months. Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust deployed Lorenzo in February this year, followed closely by Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust.

When EHI approached Norfolk and Suffolk for confirmation, the trust said it will not comment until a formal approval has been made.

EHI understands that the next trust to go live with Lorenzo will be George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust in June, followed Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust this summer and Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust in September 2014.

Four trusts which received Lorenzo under NPfIT are also live with the system. These are: Birmingham Women's NHS Foundation Trust; Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Humber NHS Foundation Trust and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust.