The East Cheshire NHS Trust board has noted a “smoother than anticipated go-live” of its MEDITECH EPR in June of this year, noting learnings to share with other trusts, the impacts across the hospitals and the next phase of the programme.
The joint go-live with Mid Cheshire NHS Foundation Trust introduced phase one functionality including emergency department, patient administration system, theatres, inpatient and outpatient clinical documentation, and radiology requesting. Inpatient electronic prescribing and medicines administration (EPMA) followed shortly after.
“This has been a very successful roll out,” East Cheshire states. “The majority of staff have adapted well to the new ways of working and are already realising the advantages of having digital clinical notes including reduction in drug errors, monitoring nursing assessments, clinical documentation in a single place etc.”
In its September board meeting, the trust noted operational impacts of the implementation, including a reduction in theatre activity, inpatient flow, and ED 4-hour performance.
The initial go live went “smoother than may have been anticipated”, according to the trust, but “wider impacts” on performance are still being worked through, with the expected exit of the stabilisation phase at the end of July extended into September. The board shares that “the scale of a two trust,‘Big bang’ first of type implementation is significant and has received positive regional and national feedback as we share our learning with other trusts.”
The next phase will focus on optimisation, with the trust looking to introduce additional functionality over the coming year. Task and finish groups have also been established to focus on incidents identified during the go-live, including in outpatients, theatres, and business intelligence and reporting; and staff engagement is continuing with the use of digital champions and leadership briefings. Further work is needed to complete final business case requirements to draw down outstanding funds, with the trust anticipating that this will happen in November 2025 “at the latest”.
Wider trend: EPR implementation
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.
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.
East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with the Epic electronic patient record system this week. In a LinkedIn post, David Grannell, associate director digital at East Suffolk and North Essex NHS, counted down the hours to the trust’s Epic EPR launch, following “four years of working with the most amazing and dedicated group of people”. David added: “What started as a blank piece of paper, development of a business case, a site visit to Clacton in Oct 2021 ends with a big bang on 2 Oct 2025.”
