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back to article NHS trust mops up after electronic patient records mess

Oxford University hospitals NHS trust is dealing with patient contact and data quality issues following a major project to implement Cerner Millennium. A roll-out of the Cerner Millennium electronic patient record (EPR) system caused delays in treating patients at Oxford University hospitals NHS, its board has found. There …

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  1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    Massive business change project (looking like a software rollout) fails to provide enough training

    While the main benefits will take 2 years (at least) to start showing through.

    I suppose the patients should be grateful it's actually working and the trust is not paralyzed with a worm.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's now better, but still far from being acceptable

    It was, indeed, a complete shambles as it was taking about 5 minutes to retrieve each caller's data on the computer. Hence the backlog and huge delays on the phone.

    It appears that some parts of the OUH may have anticipated problems because they have carried on running their own appointments systems independently of the patient contact centre. In fact, they are still advising patients to call them directly about appointments and not go through the PCC.

    However, it hasn't helped that the PCC has been giving out contact numbers to other hospital areas that don't have anyone to answer the phone (just endless answer-phones where no-one ever calls back). It seems you need to know the special handshake before you can get a contact number for someone who will actually arrange an appointment for you.

    And this is after the problems have been "fixed".

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good Lord

    Whatever next?

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  4. John A Blackley

    Not necessarily the software

    Cerner and its main competitor EPIC are in use in literally thousands of health care facilities around the world. AFAK the majority of these places use them to good effect and they do create benefits in patient care and development of lines of treatment.

    This sounds, to me, like the consequences of a bad training program.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cover up

    it was not the rollout that was bungled particularly - it is just a heinous piece of software, which was turned into a vanity project by the ex-Medical Director of BT Health who is now CEO at Oxford.

    There is now a lot of egg on people's faces and people expect the rest of the hospital to be paralysed if/when they go live with the rest of it.

    The effects have been so bad that the Trust has not submitted any figures from the new system to the Strategic Health Authority in a desperate attempt to keep their Foundation Trust application alive.

    Let's hope that people don't submit FOI requests to find out what the real performance has been, rather than the made-up figures sent to the SHA - now that would be awkward !

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