BSW Hospitals Group, formed of Royal United Hospitals Bath, Great Western Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust, has shared progress toward the 2026 go-live of its shared EPR, highlighting appointments to senior leadership positions, and work to date on benefits realisation and process mapping.
The group has moved to appoint Jonathan Hinchliffe, interim chief transformation and innovation officer, as EPR senior responsible officer. “Delivering an integrated Electronic Patient Record across Great Western Hospitals, Salisbury Foundation Trust and Royal United Hospitals presents a unique and first of type opportunity to transform the way we provide care for our patients,” Jonathan said. “With an integrated EPR we can operate as a group and better meet the needs of our patients, service users and colleagues.”
Claire Strathern also joins as EPR programme director from her role with Accenture, sharing excitement at the prospect of leading the BSW team through the implementation, and noting: “A programme such as this is complex but will bring many benefits to staff and patients alike. I look forward to working with our talented teams throughout the journey.”
Staff recently heard an insight into the initial build and functionality of the new EPR, with the group holding demonstration events over a period of nine days as an opportunity to get feedback and answer questions, as well as to validate core workflows. These workflows will continue to be refined over the coming weeks and months, it states, and the EPR team will be going out to different departments to start building a training package, helping colleagues understand the changes that need to be adopted ready for the system to go live.
BSW Hospitals Group also shared insights into what the programme’s journey has looked like to date, including baselining 104 future cash releasing and non-cash releasing benefits from its full business case, and completing more than 500 process maps across the three organisations for 20 clinical and operational workstreams, covering order comms, emergency medicine, outpatients, and bedside care.
Wider trend: EPR
East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust has shared the latest on its new EPR, confirming a contract has been signed with provider Terrafix to replace its current system over the next year. The contract with its current EPR supplier is due to end in 2027, it continues, which reportedly provided an opportunity to review the market to find a modern platform capable of supporting future clinical practice, interoperability, and service improvement. The trust outlines hopes for the new system around reducing duplication and improving data capture, incorporating digital clinical decision support tools, and helping with handovers in making sure all relevant information is on hand for those involved in a patient’s care.
The Committee for Health and Social Care in Guernsey has shared updates on its EPR programme, highlighting outcomes from phase one and a decision to “transition towards closure” in favour of a rolling programme of improvement, requiring business justification and funding approval. “These are difficult updates, but it is important that the Committee is transparent with the community about how these capital programmes have developed since their inception,” George Oswald, president of the Committee for Health & Social Care, said of both the EPR and Hospital Modernisation programme. “We recognised the problems with these programmes of work and foresaw the difficulties that would come with trying to push ahead regardless. Now, we have made what I consider to be the entirely appropriate decision to stop.”
James Hawkins, CDIO at York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has reported that the second tranche of the trust’s Nervecentre EPR has been successfully delivered. Following a deferred go-live due to delays with NHSE approval, the trust launched first tranche functionality back in May, covering observations, clinical documentation for inpatients, urgent and emergency care, ePMA, bed management, and read-only diagnostic results. At that time, the trust shared that work was ongoing with Nervecentre to agree on revised dates for go-live of tranches two and three. This latest tranche has reportedly introduced electronic pathology and radiology requesting.
