Kingston to go-live on 30 November

Tags: A BT Cerner Connelly England Kingston London Millennium NPfIT Royal Free

18 Nov 2009

Kingston Hospital NHS Trust plans to go live with Cerner Millennium on 30 November, in what has become a critical milestone for the £12.7 billion NHS IT programme.

If successful, the South West London NHS trust will become the first in the capital to go live with the US system in 18-months.

In an exclusive interview with E-Health Insider, Kingston’s chief executive, Kate Grimes, said she was as confident as she could be. “We’ve met all of the criteria we set and as far as I’m concerned we are going live on 30 November.”

In her interview, Grimes said her priority was to make sure the trust's switch from its old Clinicom system to Cerner happens smoothly.

"We are focused on getting back to business as usual as quickly as possible, as its such a major change for the organisation and all 2,700 staff.”

However, she also emphasised that the trust expects significant benefits from moving from a green screen administrative system to an up to date clinical records system.

The Department of Health's chief information officer, Christine Connelly, has set the end of November as the deadline for the NHS' 'strategic' electronic patient record systems to make "significant progress" in the acute sector.

A successful go-live at Kingston is the marker set for London's local service provider, BT, and its main software provider, Cerner.

No NHS trust in London or the South of England has implemented the Millennium care records system since the disastrous experience of the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust in 2008.

Problems cost the Royal Free up to £10m in lost revenue, led to patients having to wait longer for appointments, and derailed the NHS IT programme in London.

"The system we are taking is the same as the Royal Free, with 16 major fixes,” Grimes told EHI.

Kingston had been due to go-live immediately after the Royal Free. Grimes said that although the delays had meant some re-training for staff, they had also given the trust more time to prepare and to learn from the experience of previous implementations.

Full interview: EHI's interview with Kate Grimes is in Opinion and Analysis.

Jon Hoeksma

Connelly sets a November deadline for suppliers (28 Apr 2009) (12)
Next London Cerner go-live delayed until Autumn (12 Mar 2009) (1)
Millennium delays cost Kingston £500,000 (18 Dec 2008)
Royal Free boss says CRS problems cost £10m (13 Feb 2009) (6)
Rescue plan for Royal Free (21 Nov 2008) (16)
Royal Free says Cerner ‘extremely challenging’ (07 Aug 2008) (2)
Royal Free go-live with Millennium R1 CRS (17 Jun 2008) (5)

Readers Comments

Will the 30th happen?

18 Nov 09 09:41

I wait with baited breath to see what happens on the 30^th of November. This is so important for Cerner and the LSP model.

Newcastle has gone live partially in what seems to be a success, with a flexible project plan that surely can be improved upon.

Cerner is installed in many countries through out the world so we must be doing something different in the NHS, has anyone worked out what that is yet.

I am betting on a delay.

Big bang... !

18 Nov 09 09:55

Worryingly this seems to be a "big bang" roll out. Would it not be better for the Trust to implement in a small, non critical area first, do a lessons learnt and then roll out wider?

After all the delays and issues with other trusts, and the issues experienced operationally, a "big bang" approach seems risky.

Having recently been a patient, and having talked to staff "on the ground" there is real trepidation for this launch.

Hoping it will go well, CfH needs a Champion Site.

Big Bang...

19 Nov 09 00:21

Unfortunately, when changing the main admin system a Big bang is the only way in a Hospital site as you are left with a bit of a nightmare trying to stitch together systems and information elsewhere.

It is always painful and hard work changing a Hospital admin system, the key is getting the high volume areas of A&E and Outpatients stable and settled in.

The Clinical functionality can be phased or rolled out over time which is what other Trusts have been doing with Lorenzo Release 1 as reported in EHI. Cerner is a different beast, more like the coming Lorenzo Release 2

Good luck guys !

No surprise

19 Nov 09 11:28

Frankly it should not be any surprise that a database designed for US healthcare struggles with idiosynchratic NHS admin data. Everyone who comments on these things seems to wonder why the Cerner system per se doesn't just fly in here and work, because clinical processes should be the same the world over.

Given that there are so many so called IT people commenting on these boards I ask why they cannot see why this should present a problem? It may be that some of those need to give up the astrology and get with the science.

I agree with the fact that the admin side has to go all in one, so best wishes with that.

The shortcomings of Cerner's data model . .

chris@cjsquire.plus.com

22 Nov 09 23:25

. . were known about 10+ years ago when I [now long retired] was peripherally involved with NHS IT [I worked for the RCR & so with clinical opinion leaders of that era]. It was & no doubt remains primarily a billing system.

What puzzles me is the glacial pace of progress in these matters, so that a decade can pass & we are not much further forward & have indeed gone backwards in some respects.

How ironic

23 Nov 09 18:38

>>It was & no doubt remains primarily a billing system.<<

When I saw Cerner in the South, this was definitely my opinion. How ironic it is then, that the deployments in Barts & London and Royal Free have created such problems for the NHS bean counters? Obviously US beans are counted differently to UK beans.

It is a sad indictment of the National Programme that this was not recognised from the outset. If it was obvious in the South that reporting was an apparently insurmountable problem, shouldn't CFH have stepped in and put Cerner to rights before allowing the disasterous London deployments to proceed.

Ah well only 8 days to go and it may all be over.