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Gloucestershire Hospitals accelerates EPR roll out

18/12/19

Mark Say Managing Editor

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Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with the Allscripts Sunrise electronic patient record months before the original implementation date.

The move comes five months after the trust signed a contract with the company and well in advance of the original summer 2020 deadline.

Two early adopter wards – one for surgery, the other for renal general medicine – went live with seven nursing documentation and risk assessments in November, followed by a further 22 wards two weeks later. They were supported by a 24-hour EPR support team, providing help to nursing staff on wards and coordinated by a dedicated command centre.

More than 1,500 nursing staff are now using the EPR as part of the first roll out, with phase two planning already underway.

Blueprint for speed

Mark Hutchinson, the trust’s chief digital and information officer, said it had been able to move so quickly because it had access to a blueprint developed by Allscripts and its customers.

“With a busy winter ahead, we were determined to do everything that we could to support better, safer decision making for our staff,” he said. “We ran a very successful pilot and then put all our energy and resources into supporting staff on 24 wards at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital to go live with this system.

“Throughout the training and testing period, the response from clinicians was overwhelmingly positive, so this has been an exciting time for the organisation. We have delivered a very successful initial rollout in a short timeframe thanks to the dedication and commitment of both GHFT and Allscripts staff.”

Gloucestershire Hospitals announced it was going to deploy Sunrise Acute Care in May, with the ambition of moving from less than level 1 on the HIMSS EMRAM digital maturity model to level 6 within two years.

To do this, it has adopted a ‘clinical wrap’ strategy that will leave its third party patient administration system in place and ‘wrap’ clinical functionality around it. The blueprint provides a guide for doing this that draws on the experience of the other trusts live with Sunrise in the UK.

Staff role

The trust worked closely with its staff on development, documentation and testing to make the system “Gloucestershire friendly”.

It is also intending to bring forward the implementation of the EPR in Cheltenham General Hospital to February 2020, delivering the same seven nursing documents and risk assessments. Alongside this, it is prioritising order communications for radiology and pathology and e-prescribing.

 

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