EMIS Web installations put back

A number of GP practices waiting for EMIS’ next generation system, EMIS Web, will have to wait until after the New Year.

EMIS says it has delayed some GP installations to allow it to focus on issues such as training needs for new users.

EMIS Web will enable primary, secondary and community clinicians to view and contribute to a patient’s core GP record.

At the end of August, it had been installed at 228 GP practices and the company had taken 1,130 orders for the system.

EHealth Insider Primary Care columnist Dr Neil Paul said his Sandbach practice was due to go live in December.

EMIS told his practice manager that the installation had been cancelled with no explanation as to why or when it might now be deployed.

Dr Paul said 40 practices within the local primary care trust were moving to EMIS Web and only those booked before Christmas appeared to have been cancelled.

“The biggest worry for us is do we now get put to the back of the queue?” he said.

The delayed installation of EMIS Web meant the practice could not complete its planned change to Electronic Prescription Service Release 2, he added.

“We are pleased that if they (EMIS) have spotted a problem they are doing something about it, but we would like more information,” said Dr Paul.

A commenter on the EMIS National User Group forum said they had received a phone call from the company this month cancelling a web installation scheduled for early November.

“The board apparently met last night and made the decision that as from 1 November, no more new installs will take place 'for the foreseeable' future - minimum being the end of this year,” the user said.

A spokesperson for EMIS said the cancellations were nothing to do with "underlying, showstopping" software issues or “bugs”in the system and some practices would still have EMIS Web installed before 2012.

She added that EMIS Web was on a controlled roll-out rate of installations that could go faster or slower depending on how users were adjusting to the new system and what support they needed.

She also explained that EMIS had been through a very intensive phase of new GP installations and was entering a “quieter period” in which it would focus on meeting the training needs of new users.

It will also be completing the roll-out of an updated version of the software (v3.2), which will introduce a new Microsoft Word module.

“With any major new software roll-out you expect the unexpected. That is why we have adopted a controlled roll-out,” she said.

Decisions about which GP installations would continue are being made on a case by case basis, while non-GP installations will continue at a steady rate.

A practice manager on the userforum asked for EMIS to make a clear statement about what was happening.

Another user agreed. “EMIS need to be up front about what's concerning them if they want to keep our confidence in their future for in primary care.”