Islington News: St Bartholemew’s Hospital | Computer System | Patient | Appointment | Investigation | NHS London | Julian Nettel | Cerner

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Islington Tribune - by TOM FOOT
Published: 27 February 2009

Hundreds of patients miss appointments in IT crash

A PROBE has been launched at St Bartholemew’s Hospital after problems linked to its new computer system left hundreds of patients without appointments.
A “serious untoward incident investigation” is underway after details of more than 2,000 telephone bookings were left unprocessed on a computer spreadsheet in December.
It meant that 422 patients had to wait more than 13 weeks for outpatient appointments – a costly breach of the government waiting time targets that has led NHS London to set up its own independent review.
Julian Nettel, chief executive of Bart’s and the London NHS trust, said: “It is clear that we have an underlying issue with our management systems that we are addressing as a matter of urgency.”
The hospital said the “inadequate management systems within the outpatient appointment office” were at fault for appointments not being logged in December and that no patient had come to harm as a result of lost information.
Mr Nettel added: “Urgent cases were dealt with first and patients booked in to see a consultant as quickly as possible.”
The failure to log appointments is connected the hospital’s Cerner “Millennium” Care Records System (CRS) that was introduced at Bart’s and the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead in June.
The system, which is provided by an American firm with a UK base in Paddington, was supposed to speed up patient appointment bookings by transferring all paper patient records on to a digital system. But after a series of crashes and technical difficulties – which led to 11 cancer patients not receiving appointments within the two-week target – staff have resorted to writing down appointments on paper.
In October, the trust reported significant problems with its new Cerner CRS system, and said staff found it had made basic activities such as managing outpatient bookings more difficult and complex.
A board meeting was told that more than £3million had been lost from its reserves through Cerner.
This month’s board meeting papers warned that the “ability to report accurate and timely activity information from CRS could lead to a loss of income”.
It added: “The Trust has a significant shortfall of £13.4m.”

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