Digital roadmap focus: Wakefield

Wakefield’s draft local digital roadmap will not work without a new electronic patient record for its only acute trust, the area says.

Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust needs a new EPR, which would ideally include an e-prescribing and medicines management system.

“Without this step it will be difficult to make significant change in the district”, the LDR says.

The roadmap, described as a “live document”, also says a ‘person held shared care record’ for the area was also key to digital transformation, the roadmap says.

Which health organisations are in the footprint?

Wakefield is a small region for an LDR, covering just 327,627 people with two NHS trusts, Mid Yorkshire and mental health provider South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Forty GP practices are represented by one clinical commissioning group, NHS Wakefield CCG.

What challenges is Wakefield facing?

Predictably there’s a substantial financial hurdle in the roadmap with “partners and providers managing budget deficits into the foreseeable future”. While the EPR and other technology at Mid Yorkshire may be critical, it “cannot be achieved without transformational funding and partnership with the wider healthcare economy”.

How much money is being spent on IT?

The LDR says “existing budgets for IT capital and revenue are already over committed”, and Digital Health Intelligence found that Mid Yorkshire spent £10 million on IT in 2013 and South West Yorkshire forked out £6 million in 2014.

What else does Wakefield want?

For the roadmap to work, Mid Yorkshire also wants to increase its use of ‘Skype/FaceTime’ technologies for clinical consultations.

What is the current digital maturity?

In the Digital Health Intelligence database, Mid Yorkshire had a clinical digital maturity index score of 82 and is ranked 34 of 153 acute trusts. In the mental health CDMI listings, South West Yorkshire had a score of 71 and rank of 22 of 56 trusts.

What systems are the trusts using?

Mid Yorkshire doesn’t have an EPR, but does have range other clinical systems. It uses a range of Civica products for a clinical portal, noting and document management. South West Yorkshire uses a Servelec RiO EPR but the trust’s latest Care Quality Commission report, in March 2016, found that “most services were finding it difficult to use the system [RiO] effectively”. Problems recorded included a slow system and a mixture of paper and electronic records.
What plans are there for increasing interoperability?

Thirty-six of the 40 GP practices in the region use SystmOne which has become an “important enabler for safe clinical care”, creating a shared care record accessible across a range of clinical settings. SystmOne is used to some extent in both trusts which means “we effectively have a shared care record”, the LDR says.

It is noted that any development on shared care records should not counter this.

What happens if no central funding is made available?

The roadmap is explicit that outside money is essential. “It is abundantly apparent that transformational projects will require specific investment from NHS England.”

Read more:
* Digital roadmap focus: South West London
* Digital roadmap focus: Cheshire
* Digital roadmap focus: Hampshire and the Isle of Wight

The main organisations in the footprint include:
– CCG: NHS Wakefield
– Trusts: Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
– Local authority: Wakefield Council