Bradford goes live with iPM in just six months

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has successfully deployed the iSoft iPM system in just six months, after striking a deal with Computer Sciences Corporation and Connecting for Health last October.

The trust becomes the first hospital in the North East to go live with a CSC provided iSoft iPM PAS system.  CSC took over from Accenture as Local Service Provider for the North East and Eastern clusters in January this year.

In 2006 the trust had abandoned the national programme and gone out to tender for a new patient administration system last July through the Official Journal of the European Union, providing a deadline of March 2007, with work begin in October.

On 27 September, however, the trust announced that it had stopped the procurement and they had signed up a deal with CSC to implement the iSoft iPM PAS in just six months. The deal was underwritten by Connecting for Health with a pledge to meet extra costs for support of the trust’s existing PAS if it failed to meet the date.

A trust spokesperson confirmed to E-Health Insider: “Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has had a successful go-live of its new Patient Administration System.”

The deployment is believed to be the quickest deployment of a PAS to an acute trust yet by CSC, with most systems previously taking up to a year to prepare for a go-live.

Bradford had an urgent need for a new PAS by 1 April as the support from their existing Siemens IRC system was due to come to an end on 31 March.

In February, a trust spokesperson told EHI that work on implementation had been ongoing since the agreement was signed and the trust were able to prepare staff for a smooth go-live on 2 April.

Significantly, the Bradford PAS go-live is the first that CSC has completed in the north-east and eastern clusters, formerly controlled by Accenture.

The trust have told EHI that it would be premature to discuss the implementation in detail until after the Easter holiday, when staff will really get to grips with the new PAS. Full details are due to be released next week.

As EHI reported in February, assuming Bradford’s implementation goes well, three further acute trusts in the former Accenture clusters, Airedale, Ipswich and Northampton General, have said they plan to go live with new systems by the end of April.

A CSC spokesperson confirmed that Bradford had successfully gone live this weekend but said it would be inappropriate to say anything further until the trust is ready to issue a statement.

CSC has previously deployed 13 iSoft iPM PAS systems in acute trusts in the North-West and West Midlands cluster to date.

Now, with their first deployment into the old Accenture clusters, the LSP says it is working with all Strategic Health Authorities to discuss their needs for the forthcoming year and beyond.