Surrey and Sussex to stick with Cerner

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust has dropped plans to abandon Cerner for an iSoft alternative. Instead, the trust will continue to develop the Cerner Millennium system installed two years ago.

The trust was considering the route taken by nearby Worthing Hospital and ditching the Cerner system, due to the strategic risks created by a lack of future support and development of the software.

It is one of the ‘Live8’ NHS trusts in the South of England to have been provided with a Cerner Millennium care records system by local service provider Fujitsu, before its contract was terminated in April 2008.

E-Health Insider understands the trust board decided to stick with Cerner after seeing changes following BT being awarded a £546m contract extension to support the Live8 sites. The contract extension crucially gave the trusts a future development path.

Sources in the region speak positively of a renewed engagement with BT, and with Cerner directly, saying the situation is markedly different from the one that existed with Fujitsu.

A strategic concern discussed at board level at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust was that “development of the Cerner system was outside the trust’s control.”

This concern seems to have been allayed, with the trust now apparently confident it can influence the future development and localisation of the Cerner system to meet its specific requirements.

Trust board papers indicate that the Cerner system has created problems, particularly on reporting.

In April, the trust board said figures showing increased readmissions were due to the way data was recorded in the Cerner system and reported. An April board paper stated: “Real numbers not currently available.”

EHI understands the trust, which falls in the area covered by NHS South East Coast, had been evaluating two options, the other being to move to an unspecified iSoft system to be used in conjunction with a group of neighbouring trusts.

A shared iSoft approach is understood to be the preferred option of the SHA. ISoft has traditionally had a strong presence in the region, with several trusts using iSoft’s old Clinicom patient administration system for the past 20 years.

Had the trust chosen to switch away from Cerner, the Live 8 would have shrunk to six.

The eight have already shrunk to seven following Worthing and Sussex’s switch back to its old Sema-Helix system following a merger with St Richard’s Hospital, Chichester, to create Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust.