camden health: Kentish Town | Breast Cancer campaign | x-ray scare | computer crash

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Camden New Journal - HEALTH by TOM FOOT
Published: 6 November 2008

Council staff in Kentish Town donned pink outfits to raise funds for breast cancer research

Pink power: Depot’s charity bid makes
a clean sweep

STREET sweepers and tea ladies at the council’s waste management depot in Kentish Town were in the pink this week as they raised £155 for charity.
Staff carried out shifts in special pink uniforms and pink cakes were on sale at lunchtime as part of the Breast Cancer Campaign.
Teresa Davey, Veolia’s operations manager for street cleansing in the north of the borough, who helped organise the pink-inspired activities, said: “With over 3,000 women every month getting the devastating news that they have breast cancer, we really wanted to show our support and raise awareness among our staff about this serious issue. “We’re only a small depot, so to raise this much makes me very proud of everyone here.”
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer and one in nine women in the UK will be affected during their lifetime.

X-ray scare after computer crash

Free to launch internal investigation

PATIENTS and staff at the Royal Free may have been over-exposed to radiation because of a botched computer system installed in the Hampstead hospital in June.
The hospital admits it may be in breach of Department of Health regulations monitoring the exposure of patients to X-rays and is subject to an investigation by the Health Services Executive. In a report to be delivered to the board today (Thursday), it is revealed the hospital's radiology department may be “non compliant” with Ionising Radiation Medical Exposure Regulations because of “problems and confusion” caused by the implementation of the Cerner Computer Records System.
It said an internal investigation has been launched to discover if patients had suffered from “double exposure” due to the records mix-up. Experts told the New Journal that exposure to standard X-rays would not be a problem, but that repeated CT scans – brain scans – “would not be great”.
A hospital spokeswoman said: “The hospital board meeting notes refer to a member of staff exposure tag recording higher than expected levels of radiation exposure. This matter is subject to an ongoing review with the Health and Safety Executive to determine why the exposure may have been mis-recorded.
“Entirely separately, the introduction of the Care Records Service has introduced the possibility that a patient may have more than one record on the electronic system. This means that there is a theoretical possibility that two requests for an X-ray procedure can be made for the same patient. There has been no double exposure of a patient at the Royal Free due to the problems identified through the Cerner system.”
The Royal Free was the first London trust to pilot the Cerner system – replacing paper patient records with a digital files – aiming to speed up appointment bookings and free-up waiting lists.
But it has been beset by a series of crashes that has seen patient bookings lost and caused a massive drain on the hospital’s reserves in technical support.
The report to today’s board meeting also stated that a £7.2million deficit is mainly due to problems with Cerner: “The committee was informed that the majority of the adverse variance to budget was due to the implementation of Cerner. The shortfall comprises a number of issues where costs and losses have been incurred over the implementation plan.”

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