The board of Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust in its September meeting, welcomed the successful go-live of its Epic EPR, however noted the scale of post-implementation effort required.
Following the go-live of the EPR in May, the board stated that its “performance is now recovering”, and “acknowledged the significant operational and data quality disruption following go-live”, noting “the scale of post-implementation effort required to stabilise systems and sustain safety”.
The board shared that staff training at 90 percent of compliance has been achieved, however, they highlighted that a missed “incident during the transition prompted scrutiny of alert visibility”, with the board adding that “this has now been resolved with input from GOSH”.
On EPR long-term staffing requirements, the committee supported the business case to fund £2.5m of recurrent costs for the minimum post-go-live staffing required to support the programme. It noted: “This investment is critical to sustaining safe care delivery and reflects shortfalls in the original business case. While the proposal has been benchmarked externally and represents the minimum viable model, it creates a significant cost pressure that must be absorbed internally.”
“Successful stabilisation and optimisation of the EPR system is critical to improving clinical workflows, data accessibility, and decision-making,” the trust states. The board also shared that “a refreshed governance structure is now in place, but a formal benefits realisation report has been requested to support future investment decisions.”
On integration of the EPR to Badgernet the board highlighted it is progressing well with improved confidence in digital maternity records.
Wider trend: EPR optimisation and overcoming challenges
For a recent HTN Now session on the topic of EPRs now and in the future, we were joined by digital leaders including Sally Mole, senior digital programme manager – digital portfolio delivery team at The Dudley Group; Keltie Jamieson, CHIO at Bermuda Hospitals Board; and David Newey, digital health expert and executive CDIO. We heard in depth from our panel in terms of their EPR journey, sharing their approach, examples, challenges and lessons learned. We went on to discuss the current position with EPRs, the opportunity, and the current need. Looking ahead, we discussed what the future of EPRs looks like in the short, medium and longer term.
Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust has shared the launch of its EPR will be slightly delayed. Initially scheduled for this month, the trust’s EPR will now go live in November, replacing multiple paper-based workflows with a single, integrated system. Matthew Trainer, chief executive, stated: “It’s a massive undertaking which we need to get right and it’s why we’ve moved the launch date from this month. We want to ensure everyone has the right training and we’ve addressed any technical issues.”
For a separate HTN Now panel discussion on EPR best practices, we welcomed experts from across health and care, including Sally Mole, digital programme manager at The Dudley Group NHS FT, Fhezan Ashraf, clinical configuration manager at The Dudley Group NHS FT, Stacey Spence, EPR programme manager at Medway NHS FT and Hayley Grafton, CNIO at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. The discussion began with wider introductions, where each of our experts gave an overview of their own go-live projects before moving onto post go-live best practices, exploring key learnings and challenges when it comes to engaging the workforce and measuring adoption.
