NHS trusts are going outside the £12.4bn
National Programme for
IT (NPfIT) to find software to manage patient tests, it has
emerged.
Computer Weekly has seen board documents from three trusts
showing that they are looking outside the programme for software to
manage doctors' requests for radiology and pathology tests, a
function known as "order communications". Trusts were expecting
this functionality to be part of the NPfITs patient administration
systems.
United Bristol Healthcare now plans to install a third-party
system to cover this functionality. The trust will go live with the
second version of the
Millennium patient
administration system next year, but does not plan to use the
system for order communications.
The trust said it had "taken the opportunity to extend the scope
of this procurement to include an interim solution for order
communications". This would pay for itself by helping doctors avoid
duplicating clinical tests on patients.
One senior trust employee told Computer Weekly that clinicians
were concerned about the functionality of the second version of
Millennium software, known as R1.
"One of the key areas for radiology and pathology is the
implementation of order communications, but the R1 version is not
fit for purpose in this respect," he said. Millennium is supplied
by software firm Cerner, which has been
contracted by NHS supplier Fujitsu.
North Bristol NHS Trust said it had bought an alternative
product to handle order communications, following
delays of more than two years for Millennium. The trust said it
expected to go live with R1 next year, but it does not plan to use
the system for order communications.
Concerns have also been raised by clinicians at Worthing and
Southlands NHS Trust about whether the
first release
of Millennium, known as R0, will support order
communications.
Despite going live with the first release of Millennium, the
trust said it would continue to use manual processes for order
communications.
Board documents published in November last year state, "Many
concerns have been raised by clinicians that question the
suitability of the system to support business processes.
"There are suggestions that some areas of concern pose risks to
patient safety. The collective concerns, patient risks and
outstanding issues conclude that it is not safe to go live with
order communications in R0."
The Department of Health set the requirement for patient
administration systems, and contracted service providers to build
these systems with suppliers of their choosing.
Fujitsu said it did not believe trusts were
seeking an
alternative to Cerner for order communications.
Steve Isherwood, head of marketing for health at Fujitsu, said
that since last year, there had been a lot of discussions over
order communications and resolution over how it had been
deployed.
"R1 and R0 have order communications as part of their
functionality. If there are any issues on any areas, we will work
with the trusts on these issues. We will identify the issues and
provide solutions and resolutions for them," he said.
Cerner said the order communications functionality was part of
its product, but it declined to comment further.
NHS
Connecting for
Health has issued a tender for extra suppliers. It said it is
looking for "additional supply capability and capacity".
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