Medway planning for year’s PAS delay

Medway NHS Foundation Trust has announced its Oasis patient administration system will go live in February next year – almost one year later than planned.

In the chief executive’s report for the trust board’s August meeting, acting chief executive Phillip Barnes says the trust has set a revised go-live date of 9 February 2015, following “an additional assessment of its plans” by University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.

“They have provided significant assurance that our plans are robust and that we have an appropriately skilled team to deliver the work,” his report says.

Barnes says Birmingham has made a number of recommendations about the support needed for the implementation phase to ensure a successful outcome.

He says the introduction of the new PAS will be “the first step in revolutionising the trust’s use of information technology in delivering and improving patient care.”

The trust was due to go-live in March as the support contract for its legacy Totalcare PAS from McKesson expired at the end of the month.

However, the trust postponed the deployment after it received an extension of the support contract by McKesson.

At the time, a Medway trust spokesperson said that the planned go-live date “was always going to be a challenge” and the trust had decided to “take advantage of a short delay” after negotiating an extension of the support contract.

“This additional time will be used to consolidate end user training and ensure that staff are even more confident for a smooth transition from Totalcare to Oasis.”

McKesson told EHI last year that it would provide “limited support” for the Totalcare system past March, but only for trusts taking its Medway PAS.

Markus Bolton, joint chief executive of System C – which now holds the majority of McKesson’s UK healthcare software operations – told EHI the company is helping “a small number of clients” who were unable to move off Totalcare by March.

Bolton said System C had agreed to extend the service and support for the Medway trust with no upgrades until February 2015.

Medway announced the contract for its replacement PAS from Oasis Medical Solutions in June last year and its business case said the go-live would include A&E, order communications and results reporting.

The trust has built a new data centre and completed a ‘data cleansing’ project to prepare for the go-live.

This included increasing NHS Number coverage, checking for duplicate records, and tidying up default entries to improve data quality.

The trust had planned to merge with Dartford and Gravesham NHS Foundation Trust to create a new ‘North Kent NHS Trust’ and Medway’s original business case for the PAS included a joint implementation.

However, in June 2013 Medway was put into ‘special measures’ by health regulator Monitor, after a Care Quality Commission inspection uncovered a number of major failings, including poor communication, delayed discharges and long-waits in A&E.

In September, the two trusts agreed to stop the merger, saying it was not in their “current interests to proceed.”

Medway and Dartford and Gravesham will continue to work together on joint projects, but as the contract for Dartford’s PatientCentre PAS from CSC does not expire until 2017, it has no immediate plans to deploy the Oasis PAS.

Medway was unavailable for comment on the new go-live date.