Worthing may dump Cerner Millennium

Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust may ditch its brand new Cerner Millennium system in favour of a 20-year old legacy patient administration system.

This April, the trust will merge with neighbour The Royal West Sussex Hospital NHS Trust. Following the merger, E-Health Insider understands the intention is to run the long established Sema-Helix PAS, currently in use at The Royal Wessex, across the whole of the new trust.

E-Health Insider understands the decision to move to Sema-Helix was taken in principal by the Worthing and Southlands board in December.

It is believed to be based on the problems experienced since go-live in September 2007, and lack of ongoing development following Fujitsu’s removal as local service provider in the South.

The trust declined to confirm or deny any decision had been taken. NHS South East instead responded to questions directed to the trust, saying no “final” decision had been taken; a message repeated by NHS Connecting for Health.

The final plan, which may involve financial penalties, will need to be ratified by the new board of the merged trust. However, E-Health Insider understands the migration from Millennium to the Sema-Helix system could start this summer.

The news of the potential switch away from the Cerner Millennium Care Records System, which was provided by Fujitsu under the multi-billion pound National Programme for IT in the NHS, comes a day before the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee is due to issue another report on the troubled programme.

The PAC is expected to repeat its earlier calls for trusts to be allowed to choose their own IT from systems that comply with national standards. Currently, the Millennium software installed at Worthing is meant to be provided to hospitals across London and the South of England, but roll-out has stalled in both regions.

Sema-Helix is a twenty-year old legacy patient administration system, provided by Atos Origin. Although old, it is viewed as a stable and reliable.The Royal West Sussex was due to replace its system with Cerner Millennium in summer 2007, but the installation was hit by repeated delays and then cancelled following Fujitsu’s exit from NPfIT.

Sources in the region indicate that news of the planned move by Worthing and Southlands has caused consternation within CfH. If the trust does chose to switch off the ‘free’ CRS, it will raise significant doubts over the viability of any future Cerner roll-out in London and the South.

The decision at Worthing appears to have been taken at board level. One clinician at the trust told EHI that for all the initial frustrations, he was now a convert, and believed clinical tools offered by the Cerner system worth persevering with.

“We value our relationship with Worthing and Southlands Hospitals,” Cerner said in a statement. “We look forward to working with them in 2009 to enhance the existing system and develop a strategy that makes sense for both organisations.”

Fujitsu left the national programme in May 2008. Since then NHS CfH has failed to complete a deal with BT to take over the eight live sites. Price and the detail of how BT would move existing sites from the Fujitsu data-centre to its own without causing disruption are understood to remain key barriers to a deal.

Fujitsu has been providing the live eight sites with interim support, but no further development of the software. The senior management of Worthing and Southlands are known to have been deeply unhappy with the limitations of the version of the Cerner Millennium system provided, and have sought financial compensation from the SHA “for additional costs incurred during the implementation of Cerner.”

Problems experienced have included: data quality and generating statutory reports, waiting list inflation and billing problems that impacted the trust’s revenues.

In March 2008, the trust’s chief executive, Stephen Cass, wrote to staff thanking them for their efforts and telling them that the trust had invested additional resources to make the software work.

Cass said that as Millennium was then the chosen software for the whole of the Southern NHS, the trust had no alternative but make it work: “There is no going back for us – and we are committed to making it work.”

Related articles:

Millennium remains a ‘challenge’ at Worthing

Worthing still has ‘data quality issues’