Liverpool Women's is First in the UK to Complete Modern EPR Milestone
The Client
Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust delivers the highest standards of care for women, babies and families. Each year, they deliver over 7,500 babies, carry out around 50,000 gynaecological inpatient and outpatient procedures, care for over 1,000 poorly and premature newborns, perform around 1,000 IVF cycles, and conduct over 4,000 genetic appointments.
The Trust is constantly innovating and evolving its services to provide the most cutting-edge and modern care possible.
Liverpool Women's became the first in the UK to go-live with a modern EPR, after working with CereCore International to implement MEDITECH Expanse.
The challenge
Liverpool Women's Hospital has undertaken a significant programme of work replacing the Trust's legacy Patient Administration System (PAS) with a modern electronic patient records (EPR) solution. The size of the task was increased due to the age of the system, as it had originally been implemented in 1996.
CereCore International began working with Liverpool Women's in January of 2023 on their effort to transition from MEDITECH Magic to MEDITECH Expanse, which is a fully web-enabled modernised EPR platform. The project was completed in an impressive seven months, with go-live in July of 2023.
There were certain requirements the Trust was looking for at the time:
- Specialist knowledge and support, particularly with EPR configuration, to meet the NHS standards.
- Building at pace to help with the volume of work in the clinic builds, electronic prescribing, roles and configuration of access for staff.
How we helped
CereCore International got up to speed immediately, and that was one of the most impressive aspects of the collaboration as, at that point, it meant having a quick turnaround in resources commitment.
The volume of work around EPR configuration and build were the biggest challenges to meet the timescales. CereCore International helped by providing the skilled resources and knowledge to support the Trust by ensuring that the build and configuration were as optimal as possible to keep a successful go-live.
CereCore International also provided the volume of resources that allowed Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust to speed up some of their activities that otherwise may have been postponed.
The team's NHS expertise made a difference. Since CereCore International colleagues have worked in various health services roles with NHS Trusts, they understand the challenges and complexity that an EPR implementation introduces.
The client was confident throughout the collaboration due to the team's NHS experience and expertise, which added the assurance that the build and configuration would meet the requirements and the NHS Standards.
The good communication throughout the project, combined with the skills and pace of work, helped the Trust enable a successful go-live in July.
The results
- Excellent, ongoing collaboration between CereCore International and Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust.
- Successful go-live on MEDITECH Expanse. The Trust has become the first NHS organisation in the UK to achieve this milestone.
- Staff are using a modern configured system, and that has clearly a benefit to patients' experience as well as clinicians, nurses and midwives, with a smooth transition to a post go-live optimisation phase.
- The benefits from a safety perspective are instant in terms of Medicines Management, including co-signing, drug dispensing and prescribing.
- Improved ordering processes and associated documentation and auditing.
- Established a strong foundation for continued modernisation initiatives.
- Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust have won the Health Tech Team of the Year category at the HTN Now Awards 2024, for the MEDITECH Expanse implementation, paving the way for frontline digitisation as first-of-type site in the NHS.
What the client has to say
"Working collaboratively with CereCore International has been instrumental in achieving a successful, on-time go-live for our new electronic patient record system. The expertise, knowledge, and swift support provided played a crucial role in delivering the program seamlessly."
| Matt Connor, Chief Information Officer at Liverpool Women's NHS Foundation Trust
>> Listen to Matt explain more about the EPR transition, the benefits, and the lessons learnt during this journey, on the CereCore International podcast.
