East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust has successfully switched on its Allscripts PAS in a three-day operation at the start of October.
The switch to the new system followed the migration of 42 million records from one system to the other.
Andy Barker, IT director at East Kent Hospitals, said: “An enormous amount of work by Allscripts and trust staff ensured the change-over ran as smoothly as we could hope for. This was important to ensure continuity of care and patient safety. It went well, with no significant impact on trust operations.”
“Deploying a new PAS is a major undertaking, but our old system was outdated and we had to change it to move onto the next stage of our IT development. The Allscripts PAS gives us the platform to move forward with an electronic patient record. We are going to be deploying Sunrise, working with Allscripts again. We have been well supported by Allscripts which has excellent implementation consultants who are very knowledgeable about the system.”
East Kent Hospitals ran a joint procurement for a new PAS with neighbouring Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in 2015, as part of the South Acute Programme. This was set up to give providers in the south of England access to central funding for technology, following the end of the National Programme for IT.
Susan Acott, CEO at East Kent Hospitals said: “For a CEO, replacing a PAS is a significant event within a Trust. We mitigated risks, planned for reduced clinical activity and had super users walking the operational floors for the go live. Our COO took a pivotal lead role operationally prior to, during and after we cut over to the new PAS; this was key to our smooth and successful transition. We are experiencing teething issues, as one would expect, but we are working collaboratively with Allscripts to settle the PAS into business as usual. Overall, we had a successful PAS implementation, which sets a solid foundation for our EPR and full digital transformation.”
