Widespread failings discovered in EPR launch linked to patient death

“Better upfront planning, training and testing” were needed in a tech launch which was tied to patient harm and service disruption, an NHS England review has found. 

Royal Surrey and Ashford and St Peter’s Hospitals foundation trusts went live with Oracle Cerner’s electronic patient record in May 2022 – under a programme called Surrey Safe Care – but the implementation has since been linked to incidents of patient harm, including one death, and significant disruption to trust services.

Now, a lessons learned review, carried out by NHSE’s frontline digitisation team and obtained by HSJ via a Freedom of Information request, has identified 24 areas of improvement.

The key lessons cited by the review are “better upfront planning, roles and responsibilities, training and testing”. 

It recommended that, in future implementations, trust boards should be supported by others experienced with implementing EPRs within the NHS to “aid board level decisions and ‘what questions to ask when’”, while clearer responsibilities should also be agreed upon for programme leads and EPR suppliers.

The review also found the content of training must be evaluated thoroughly, while the EPR supplier should provide “upfront and continuous training”. It added the “full end-to-end testing [by] representatives from all end user groups” should be completed before go-live.

It also said EPR readiness needs to incorporate “data readiness, such as data quality, and mapping how data has originally been captured [which] may impact reporting and organisational readiness”.

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Source: HSJ, 15 January 2024

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