Engagement that will last up to four years is intended to help entities across the health service upgrade to digital platforms while not compromising robustness of information or patient pathways
An NHS body has implemented a national commercial agreement to help organisations address potential “significant data-quality issues” caused by moving to electronic patient record systems.
As of 29 May, the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – acting on behalf of the health service as a whole – entered into an initial two-year framework agreement with five suppliers: Insource; Acumentice; Aire Logic; Answer Digital; and Ideal Health Consultants.
According to a newly published commercial notice, the engagements are intended to serve as “a national framework agreement that will enable NHS Organisations to access highly specialised support to enable the testing and validation of patient data, as part of the process of migrating from a legacy PAS (patient administration system) to a modern EPR system”.
The document adds that many NHS bodies are either currently engaged in such a migration process, or are planning to launch one soon.
But many outgoing legacy systems do not comply with requirements regarding NHS referral to treatment (RTT) standards which, among other rules, stipulate that patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks to be seen by a secondary-care consultant. This incompatibility means that “RTT pathways and associated events for migration have to be manually manufactured from existing referrals and outcomes”, according to the notice.
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“There may also be significant data quality issues with legacy data that will impact on the management and integrity of that data prior to implementation of a new EPR system,” it says. “NHS organisations may lack in-house expertise and/or capacity to undertake the necessary data cleansing exercises and may require expert assistance in undertaking a data validation exercise prior to the client’s planned migration of its legacy PAS to a modern EPR system.”
The notice adds: “The objective of this framework is to provide NHS organisations – ‘the clients’ – with expert assistance in undertaking data validation exercises prior to and following a client’s planned migration of its PAS to a modern EPR system. This includes the validation of incomplete pathways, incomplete waiting lists and duplicated pathways as well as understanding the data quality issues that could facilitate the RTT migration to the EPR system and the client’s Covid-19 restoration and recovery work.”
Services offered via the framework are intended to enable NHS entities to “improve the quality of patient data held within the EPR and support the optimal use of the EPR from implementation”. The framework is also hoped to reassure leaders, commissioning groups, and the public “of the accuracy of the patient data held, and particularly how this is managed in relation to supporting RTT and other associated patient access standards”.
During its work with NHS bodies, meanwhile, Insource will be expected to “ensure that effective knowledge transfer takes place and… help the client to develop an in-house central validation and booking team to achieve business as usual booking and reporting post the EPR implementation”.
The deal – which can be extended for a further two years, taking its potential end date to 2029 – is expected to be worth up to £12m, inclusive of VAT.
The NHS is now in the final year of a £2bn programme that is intended to deliver ubiquitous implementation of EPR systems across trusts. While the project has reached more than 90% adoption, there are still 19 trusts yet to deploy a digital system. Although these organisations are now receiving “tailored support” from NHS England, ministers have previously indicated an expectation that about eight trusts are likely to miss the March 2026 deadline – which has already been pushed back by a year.
