Doctors go public with Millennium concerns

Two doctors using the Cerner Millennium went public last night to voice serious concerns about the system.

One of them, independent A&E specialist, Chris Taylor, said she believed the system put patients at risk.

Interviewed on Channel 4 News, Dr Taylor expressed the view that in its present incarnation Millennium’s benefits were non-existent and that the costs and risks were considerable.

She drew attention to the problems of printing labels for blood samples as an example of risk.

“ I was walking around the department with a handful of blood samples in my hand afraid of putting them down because I didn't want to get them mixed up with the samples that others had in their hands which were equally unlabelled because the system couldn't cope,” she said.

“So if you are asking me whether it puts patients at risk? Yes, it does, because sometimes you must not delay treatment.”

Cerner told Channel 4 News: “The Cerner Millennium solution has passed all...testing and assurance requirements.” They added they had conducted performance tests on speed with satisfactory results.

Dr Simon Eccles, Connecting for Health’s national clinical director for acute care and a London hospital A&E consultant himself, said the problem needed to be investigated but pointed out that there was an escalation procedure for dealing with such issues.

"We do have a very clear escalation policy for any issue that offers risk to patients. It is unacceptable to leave patients at risk and we don't do so,” he said.

The second consultant unhappy with the newly-installed system was Dr Patrick Carr of Worthing Hospital who said it had been abandoned in the hospital’s A&E department. “Every process we used to do by hand seemed to take longer using the Cerner solution,” he said.

Dr Eccles said that in two years’ time he expected most hospitals to have the system working reasonably well.

It was also alleged that the system was costing trusts more than they had expected. Dr Carr said that at Worthing hundreds of thousands of pounds had had to be spent to make it work.

Channel 4 reported: “In just three of the 13 trusts with it - Taunton, Worthing, and Winchester - extra staff and other costs add up to around £1m.”

Link

Channel 4 – NHS multimillion pound IT: the risks