A dozen hospitals to share single patient record system

According to its draft commissioning strategy, North West London Integrated Care System’s four acutes are “work[ing] towards one acute group model” that will sit alongside the system’s single commissioning group and a single community and mental health collaborative.

In line with that, London North West Healthcare Trust and the Hillingdon Hospitals Foundation Trust have signed a 10-year, £40m deal for the Cerner EPR. Their two inner London neighbours — Chelsea and Westminster FT and Imperial College Healthcare Trust — are already running the system.

Using the same EPR will allow for greater interoperability, LNWH said in a statement. There are around 2.5 million patients registered with GPs in NWL and they will now have a single record with their medical history, including allergies and alerts, available to clinicians at whichever of the hospital sites they attend.

This will be among the first times all acute providers in a health system have adopted the same EPR system enabling sharing of patient information to such a degree. It should also support the consolidation of back-office IT services across the ICS, the trust added.

The system’s acutes have been increasingly collaborating on clinical services and sharing senior executives to support the rollout of the shared EPR.

LNWH and THH have had a joint chief information officer since 2017 — first Sonia Patel, who left to join NHSX last summer, and now Robbie Cline, who filled the role as an interim before being made substantive in February. Mr Cline joined the trusts from ICHT, where he was deputy CIO since 2012 and led the Cerner system’s implementation.

His responsibilities at LNWH and THH include “[leading] the implementation of an electronic patient care record programme across both trusts to drive at scale operational and clinical transformation over the next three to five years,” according to a job advert for the post published in December.

The two trusts have also been recruiting several senior joint roles to work on the Cerner rollout and digital integration across the two trusts.

CWFT and ICHT have had a joint CIO, Kevin Jarrold, for the past five years. Mr Jarrold was CIO at Imperial, where he oversaw the rollout of Cerner, and took on the joint post after CWFT decided to adopt the same EPR in 2016.

CWFT and THH have also been sharing senior administrative and clinical staff. THH’s chief people officer, Sue Smith, holds the CPO role across both trusts.

Ms Smith is building a team to span both trusts, including recruiting a deputy at CWFT who will work across both FTs. The team is developing “collaborative working across four hospital sites” run by CWFT and THH, according to the deputy CPO job description.

Meanwhile, CWFT has been providing THH with senior leadership support since the latter’s chief executive, Sarah Tedford, resigned in August 2020 for family reasons following some controversy around the temporary closure of the hospital’s emergency department due to coronavirus staffing problems.

CWFT consultant obstetrician and divisional medical director of women’s services, Gubby Ayida, has also been working at THH since October 2020 as the trust’s medical director. CWFT’s chief executive, Lesley Watts, has been a special adviser to THH’s board supporting its interim chief executive until a substantive appointment was made late last year.