GPs warn of patient safety issues amid hospital electronic records upgrade
Exclusive GPs have warned of potential patient safety issues and a significant impact on practices as hospital correspondence was delayed following an electronic records upgrade.
GP practices in Sheffield complained to the ICB about delays to hospital discharge summaries and other GP correspondence, with the local trust confirming to Pulse the issue stemmed from an electronic patient record (EPR) upgrade.
However it pointed to human error at the trust rather than any problems with the IT system.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (STHFT) told Pulse the introduction of a new EPR caused ‘initial issues relating to discharge summaries and other GP correspondence’ resulting in four GP practices flagging issues to South Yorkshire ICB.
According to Sheffield LMC, the issue has caused ‘significant impacts on primary care services and potential patient safety issues’.
In an update to practices, the committee said: ‘There have been significant impacts on primary care services and potential patient safety issues. STHFT/ICB have now established thrice weekly meetings to discuss these, and GPs can email issues to STHFT.’
The trust’s chief medical officer Dr Nick Lyons told Pulse: ‘The new system is far richer in clinical functionality than the one it replaces but from an administrative perspective it works very differently, and this has resulted in some initial issues relating to discharge summaries and other GP correspondence.
‘In particular the timeliness of some correspondence has been raised by certain practices.’
Dr Lyons said the trust had ‘acted quickly’ to identify the cause and said it was ‘not aware that there is any impact on test results being relayed to GPs as normal.’
‘We have addressed this by providing additional training to staff and we are also monitoring the correspondence going into the system and ensuring it is appropriately completed and issued on a daily basis.
‘We are continuing to update our primary care colleagues on the actions we are taking, and we are very grateful for their patience and support in these early days of the new system being in use.
‘We also have a system in place where GPs can raise any issues or concerns to us direct and anything where there could be a potential patient impact is immediately escalated for urgent resolution.’
The trust separately told Pulse the issues were due to a new process for discharge letters not being followed, as opposed to an IT systems fault.
STHFT went live with its Cerner Millennium EPR in July after signing an £85m, 10-year contract with American technology company Oracle Health in 2023.
The trust pushed back an initial go-live date for the EPR last year while it waited for updates, a full safety report to be published, and staff to be trained using the system.
The contract included the option for other South Yorkshire trusts to adopt the same EPR. Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust confirmed to Pulse it does not have an EPR in place but planned to adopt the same system as STHFT when it does so, scheduled for 2027.
Pulse has contacted Oracle Health for comment.
