‘Rolls-Royce’ EPR still being driven ‘like a Ford Focus’ admits trust CEO

The chief executive of an acute trust operating in one of the country’s most troubled healthcare economies has admitted his organisation is struggling to get the most from its top of the range electronic patient record system three years after rollout. 

Royal Devon University Healthcare Foundation Trust implemented the Epic EPR in October 2020, but the system is still causing problems with reporting performance. 

In an interview with HSJ, chief executive Sam Higginson described Epic as a “Rolls-Royce of an EPR”, but he added: “For lots of different reasons we’re still driving it a little bit like it’s a Ford Focus.

He added: “We assumed by installing an EPR that basically it would have a sufficient level of functionality that we could switch off pretty much everything else. But then you find actually it doesn’t quite have the functionality you thought it did, or you don’t quite know how to use it.”

However, Mr Higginson said the trust’s use of the EPR was improving “every month”, and the trust is testing a new cancer reporting module which it hopes will resolve the reporting problems.

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Source: HSJ, 21 May 2024