Patients complain about disruption following new EPR in Sheffield

Patients have complained about disruption to outpatients bookings and waiting lists following the introduction of  a new electronic patient record (EPR) system at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

The trust went live with its £85 million Oracle Cerner EPR in July 2025, following an eight month delay to deal with “outstanding issues” around system and organisational readiness.

Following the go live, Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield South East, wrote to Kirsten Major, chief executive of the trust, stating that constituents had “serious concerns about an ongoing failure in the hospital’s digital patient records system that has persisted for a number of weeks”.

“According to these reports – which specifically mention cardiology and potentially other departments – the trust’s electronic system has been ‘down’ or malfunctioning in a way that waiting list data and patient records have gone missing or become inaccessible.

“In one case a patient was informed by staff that the cardiology department no longer knows who is on their waiting list due to this system issue.

“Understandably, this situation is causing anxiety to patients who are unsure if they remain in the queue for treatment or have ‘fallen off’ the list through no fault of their own,” the letter says.

Responding to the concerns, Major told Digital Health News: “A change of this magnitude and scale is bound to have some initial issues to resolve and we have had disruption to some of our outpatient appointment booking processes and correspondence.

“We picked this up very quickly and thanks to the amazing work of our staff many of the clinics affected have already been corrected, and we have a programme of work to complete the remainder as quickly as possible to limit any impact on existing waiting times.

“Our clinical teams are continuing to triage and prioritise the most urgent appointments as normal, and all patients will be contacted as soon as their appointment is ready to be scheduled in line with the waiting time for that clinic or service.”

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Source: Digital Health News, 24 September 2025

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