St George’s gets Cerner for Easter

St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust has gone live with Cerner Millennium, the strategic electronic patient record system provided by London's local service provider, BT.

In a statement, chief operating officer Patrick Mitchell said: “The first phase of the Cerner Millennium deployment at St George’s Healthcare NHS Trust went live as planned on Monday 29 March.

“This phase has replaced the patient administration system and provides an integrated A&E, bed management and outpatient system to the trust. Subsequent phases will include full theatre scheduling, diagnostic ordering and resulting and a specialist critical care module.”

The trust approved a business case to implement Cerner in November 2007, but delayed the implementation because of the problems experienced by both Barts and the London and the Royal Free Hampstead NHS trusts following their deployments.

In September 2009, EHI reported that St George’s was working to implement Cerner to a 21 December deadline. It then decided to delay the implementation until March 2010 in order to take more time to prepare staff for the move.

At the time, Kevin Jarrold, chief information officer and programme director of the NHS London Programme for IT, said that he supported the trust’s decision to take additional time to prepare fully.

“The trust recognises that IT is an enabler of transformation and change so it is important to get it right. We will continue to work closely with the trust to provide any support it needs in its preparations for go-live,” he said.

In his statement, Mitchell said: “Staff at the trust have worked closely with colleagues from BT and the London Programme for IT to ensure a smooth transition onto the new system and we are pleased with how things have gone so far.

“However, work is ongoing to ensure the project remains on course and is a success.” The new system replaces an obsolete, 23 year old PAS from software provider iSoft.

The news is a boost for the National Programme for IT in the NHS. Last spring, NHS chief information officer Christine Connelly set it a number of targets to show that ‘significant progress’ was being made in getting systems into acute hospitals.

One of the deadlines was to deploy Millennium into another acute trust by last November. This happened when Kingston Hospital NHS Trust went live. St George’s is the second London trust to go live with the system since the deadline was set.

However, the news comes just days before the LSP for the North, Midlands and East of England, CSC, is meant to meet a 31 March deadline to go-live with Lorenzo Release 1.9 at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust. This go-live looks far less certain.