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Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust to get full EPR
The trust is extending its partnership with Allscripts as it signs up to the supplier’s electronic patient record system
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust will use systems from supplier Allscripts to deliver its full electronic patient record system (EPR), serving as a basis for the trust’s 10-year digital ambitions.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells is already an Allscripts customer, having deployed its patient administration system in October 2017, and will begin to roll out the Sunrise EPR in a phased deployment, starting next autumn.
The trust plans to roll out several EPR modules, including order communications, test results, e-prescribing, clinical documentation and mobile working.
It will also roll out the supplier’s surgical care module in theatres and the emergency care module in A&E.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells chief clinical information office Jim MacDonald, said clinicians have been involved from the start in reviewing the system.
“At the moment, clinicians move between paper and IT systems to find the information they need,” he said. “Having the right information, in the right place, at the right time, will enable us to improve our working processes and patient care.”
The trust, which covers two large hospitals, has together with other local health and care organisations, set out its local digital roadmap as part of the Kent and Medway sustainability and transformation plan.
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The aim is to have a shared digital Kent and Medway Universal Care Record across the region, where systems across health and care are “interconnected”.
This is part of the government’s plans for a paperless NHS by 2020, which will see clinicians being able to access patient records electronically at the point of care, and give patients access to their own records.
Two of the other trusts in the region, East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust and Medway NHS Foundation Trust, are also Allscripts customers.
Allscripts, whose EPR system is widely used in the US, first gained entry into the UK EPR market in March 2012, when Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust announced plans to take the system. It was quickly followed by Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust later the same year.
Allscripts then set up its UK head office in Manchester and won more trusts across the region. Since then, the suppler has grown significantly within the UK market and is now on its way to becoming one of the key EPR suppliers in the NHS.
