Salford Royal rolls out new EPR system

Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust is celebrating the successful launch of its new Electronic Patient Record (EPR).

The trust has transferred approximately one million patient records, including prescriptions, correspondence, test results and patient assessment notes, into its new EPR system - Allscripts’ Sunrise Clinical Manager (SCM).

After nine months of planning, over the weekend of June 8 and June 9, the trust migrated in the region of 1.06 million patient records, 14 million clinical letters, and around 180 million diagnostic results from the old system to the new one. Salford Royal is the first trust in the country to install Allscripts’ SCM and activated the new system three months earlier than originally planned.

During the first four days after the rollout, more than 56,000 orders, results and documents were viewed and entered electronically into the SCM system by more than 3,350 users. The peak number of users logged in at any one time was 600.

Around 7,000 health care professionals will benefit from using the new system, including onsite staff, staff working in the community, and 160 GPs at 55 surgeries across the city.

For patients, the new system provides the trust with the platform to transform care and allow a patient’s record to be accessed by the clinicians involved in their care regardless of location, for example, the hospital or GP surgery.

The new EPR firmly places Salford Royal at the forefront of health informatics and will allow the organisation to introduce further innovation, for example allowing patients to log on and view their own health records via a portal.

Director of finance and deputy chief executive of the trust, Tony Whitfield, said: “We are absolutely delighted to launch our new EPR, which provides a far safer, reliable and convenient solution for our patients and our clinical staff.

“The organisation has been planning the smooth switchover from the old system to the new one for many months. While we installed the new system, we had a short period of planned system downtime.

“The transfer from the old system to the new was a huge undertaking and I am really proud of how hard our members of staff worked in the run-up to, and over the weekend, to ensure patients did not see any difference in their care during this time.”

Paul M Black, Allscripts’ president and chief executive officer, added: “I am thrilled at the successful, early and on-budget activation at Salford Royal and the joint effort of the hospital’s physicians, nurses and information system department and the Allscripts team. Allscripts is committed to helping Salford Royal provide excellent, efficient care.”