Bury misses early planning go-live

NHS Bury has failed to meet its early planning go-live date for Lorenzo Regional Care (Release 1.9).

Minutes from NHS Bury’s Commissioning Board, dated 5 August 2009, predict that the trust will go-live with the iSoft electronic patient record system on 26 October.

However, NHS Bury has confirmed that it has missed this date, although it hopes to go live before the end of November.

Local service provider CSC is due to deliver the iSoft electronic patient record system to the primary care trust as part of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

The Commissoning Board paper says Dr John Hampson, local GP and professional executive committee lead for IM&T at NHS Bury, reported on IT projects ongoing at the PCT.

“The [NPfIT] projects that are ongoing include Lorenzo Regional Care Release 1.9 and 2.0," he said. "This has been in development since 2004. The go-live date for this is the 26th October 2009. Community Services Bury is the first community site to use the clinical functionality.”

Ann Halpin, associate director of IM&T at NHS Bury, told EHI in a statement: “As an early planning date, NHS Bury had been working to deploy Lorenzo Regional Care Release 1.9 on Monday 26th October 2009.

"This date was later revised in advance of any deployment and we remain on track to deploy Lorenzo Care Management before the end of November.”

In April, director general of informatics Christine Connelly set NPfIT's remaining LSPs, CSC and BT, deadlines for “significant” progress with their ‘strategic’ systems by the end of November 2009.

EHI revealed that NHS Bury is Lorenzo's November milestone. It remains unclear what will happen if the deadline is not met.

Link: Minutes of the NHS Bury Commissioning Board meeting