East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust has successfully changed its patient administration system; putting it on a platform from which to deploy a full electronic patient record. The trust switched off its legacy IT system and switched on its Allscripts PAS in a three-day operation at the start of October.
The huge project, which included the migration of 42 million records from one system to the other, was described as "exceptionally calm", thanks to months of planning and the close involvement of executive and operational teams.
Andy Barker, IT director at East Kent Hospitals, said: "An enormous amount of work by Allscripts and trust staff ensured the change-over ran as smoothly as we could hope for. This was important to ensure continuity of care and patient safety. It went well, with no significant impact on trust operations.
"Deploying a new PAS is a major undertaking, but our old system was outdatedand we had to change it to move onto the next stage of our IT development. The Allscripts PAS gives us the platform to move forward with an electronic patient record.
"We are going to be deploying Sunrise, working with Allscripts again. We have been well supportedby Allscripts which has excellent implementation consultants who are very knowledgeable about the system."
East Kent Hospitals ran a joint procurement for a new PAS with neighbouring Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in 2015, as part of the South Acute Programme.
This was set up to give providers in the south of England access to central funding for technology, following the end of the National Programme for IT.
The two trusts picked the PAS built by Oasis Medical Solutions, which was acquired by Allscripts in July 2014, but asked for a considerable amount of development work to be done, particularly on order communications.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells went live with the PAS a year ago and announced earlier this year that it would also deploy the Sunrise EPR.
Steve Brain, vice president and UK managing director, Allscripts, said of the East Kent Hospitals implementation: "This was an exceptionally smooth and calm go-live. That was a tribute to the Allscripts team at East Kent, and also to the trust, which worked hard to make sure that its clinical staff owned the transition.
"We now look forward to working with both East Kent and Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells on EPR deployments that will deliver significant benefits to their clinicians and patients."
Barker explained that three years of work had gone into preparing for the PAS go-live. A steering group was set up, chaired by deputy chief executive Liz Shutler, and divisional managers were actively involved in developing new working processes and in testing the system.
Following trial loads and a full-dress rehearsalto make sure that records would migrate from one system to the other, the trust achieved 99.99% data migration over the go-live weekend. Super-users and floor walkers were deployed to support clinicians and other front-line staff.
Susan Acott, CEO at East Kent Hospitals said: "For a CEO, replacing a PAS is a significant event within a Trust. We mitigated risks, planned for reduced clinical activity and had super users walking the operational floors for the go live. Our COO took a pivotal lead role operationally prior to, during and after we cut over to the new PAS; this was key to our smooth and successful transition. We are experiencing teething issues, as one would expect, but we are working collaboratively with Allscripts to settle the PAS into business as usual. Overall, we had a successful PAS implementation, which sets a solid foundation for our EPR and full digital transformation."
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