Barts and The London deny CRS crash report

Barts and The London NHS Trust has denied reports in a tabloid newspaper alleging their new Cerner Millennium system crashed on its first day of operation.

The project is the largest hospital go-live yet under the £12.4bn NHS IT programme.

The Sun newspaper yesterday reported the new “computer scheme crashed on launch day…forcing doctors at The Royal London and Barts hospitals in East London to write notes on slips of paper.”

However, both the trust and lead contractor BT, denied the reported crash to E-Health Insider, and stressed work was continuing to ensure patients care would not be compromised.

In a statement, the trust said: “The new patient administration system – also known as the Care Record Service (CRS) – installed at Barts and The London NHS Trust this week did not crash, contrary to what was reported in today’s Sun newspaper.

“A period of adjustment was anticipated with contingencies in place to support staff who experienced any problems, with the majority of issues being resolved within 24 hours.”

A BT spokesperson added: “There were some teething problems, which are typical when you switch over to a system of this kind. It is important to remember that this is the biggest Cerner implementation we have done so far, with around 3.35m records migrated.”

Links

The Sun article