Winchester has four-day Millennium failure

12 Jun 2008

Winchester and Eastleigh Healthcare NHS Trust, has in the past week suffered a four day problem with its Cerner Millennium Care Records System (CRS) that left it unavailable to some users for up to four days.

The problems began on Thursday, 5 June, and though largely resolved by Sunday were not fully fixed until Monday, 9 June. While the system was unavailable the trust reverted to manual paper systems.

Enquiries by EHI revealed that support to get the system running again was supplied by Fujitsu.

In a prescient June board paper the trust identified uncertainty over support arrangements as a result of Fujitsu ceasing to be LSP as a critical ‘red’ strategic risk to the trust. The paper says the trust is, “Working with SHA and SPfIT to ensure full maintenance contracts are in place and agree an escalation process in the event of a system failure...”

Shortly afterwards Winchester become the first trust in the south to have to put the interim support arrangements for its Millennium system to the test, since Fujitsu who installed the software had its regional local service provider contract (LSP) ended.

There has been a recent track record of problems with the centralised hosting of the software. In May alone there were two instances of region wide problems, resulting in the Millennium system becoming unavailable or very slow to access.

The latest problem at Winchester appears to have been more local, the trust says it resulted from “fragmented database tables leading to serious queus”. A series of fixes were tried from Thursday onwards with the problem resolved by a specialist supplied by Fujitsu.

A trust spokesperson said other key hospital systems, including WinPath, JAC and PACS were not effected and all functioned as normal.

Because of the way LSP contracts were set up under the NHS IT programme trusts have no direct relationship with their CRS software vendor, meaning they are unable to turn to Cerner for support.

So despite having its LSP contract terminated trusts currently remain wholly reliant on Fujitsu for support, until transition arrangements are completed. Fujitsu still runs the data centres that the centrally hosted Millennium system, installed at eight NHS trusts in the south, is delivered from.

Simon Wombwell, the trust’s director of finance and IM&T said: “The level of support we have had from Fujitsu has left us in no doubt of their commitment – their swift response, technical assistance and sheer hard work has been very much appreciated.”

A trust spokesperson said the trust was now satisfied with the support arrangements and would be removing it from their risk register.

A spokesperson for the Southern Programme for IT added: “Fujitsu has undertaken to work constructively and professionally with the NHS to manage the transfer of live services to a replacement supplier. During the transition, Fujitsu will continue to maintain all live services and manage an orderly transfer of service.”

Jon Hoeksma

Reader's Comments

what else is new?

cpoee1@yahoo.com

13 Jun 08 04:39

Clearly, all patients suffer endangerment during this disruption. Patient injury (if any) ought be reported and recorded for research reports on the benefits (or lack thereof) of such electronic contrivances.

Parallel Universe

13 Jun 08 07:53

Did I read this correctly? In response to a 4 day outage - which presumably will have caused chaos at the Trust - what happens?

* The Trust REMOVES the support issues from its risk register

* The Trust DEFENDS the support from Fujitsu

* CFH PRAISES the professionalism of the supplier

What exactly constitutes unacceptable performance, do you think?

Correct in one

13 Jun 08 09:29

Yes you read correctly, company with no contract expends much time and effort correcting issue

Parallel Universe - Get your facts straight

13 Jun 08 09:47

No you didn't read it correctly.There wasn't a "4 day outage" if you read the article properly it says "left it unavailable to some users for up to four days" and "though largely resolved by Sunday were not fully fixed until Monday, 9 June". Clearly the Trust was happy with the support they got so why knock it.

Winchester

13 Jun 08 11:09

Interesting to note that the slant of the article was changed from Fujitsu still supporting the trust to Winchester suffering a four day outage.

Humble Pie

13 Jun 08 14:49

I am terribly sorry, I was misled by the headline. Quite right, it appears that the Trust was only without a PAS for 3 days not 4.

So that's alright then.

Terminated?

nhstechie@btinternet.com

14 Jun 08 21:09

"So despite having its LSP contract terminated trusts currently remain wholly reliant on Fujitsu for support ..."

Jon - surely the point is that the contract hasn't yet been terminated as the CfH/Fujitsu discussions haven't been concluded. Until they are, surely Fujitsu is legally bound to honour the original contract agreement and maintain all support arrangements?

Bit of a non-story really.