The West Somerset Family is made up of a medium-sized acute hospital in Taunton (Musgrove Park), and a number of PCT locations dealing with outpatient clinics, maternity and minor injuries. There are also some surgical beds in some of the community hospitals.

West Somerset is taking virtually all of the patient administration system (PAS) functionality within the Millennium R0 solution as well as elements of the Maternity, Theatres and A&E functionality. West Somerset is also planned to be the 'First of Type' for Choose and Book and is currently achieving close to 95% direct booking for new appointments.

Our approach

The NHS CFH deployment support team provided West Somerset Family with a single point of contact to assist with the deployment of the R0 solution. The role of the single point of contact included:

• providing independent assurance that the project is being managed and executed in such a manner that will result in a safe and successful deployment
• providing a line of communication between the trust and NHS CFH to ensure issues are escalated appropriately
• identifying and implementing opportunities in project management and technical workstreams, including:
• sharing best practice or knowledge from other deployments
• deploying and managing NHS CFH team members to deliver specific support outcomes
• knowledge and skills transfer to NHS project and operational staff, where appropriate
• supporting the trust and supplier in identifying and managing dependencies
• working with the trust and supplier to provide clarity on issues of dispute/contention
• identifying areas where NHS CFH can provide specific project management support during cutover and go-live
• assure and facilitating production of all 'Authority To Proceed', patient safety and go-live management documentation
• supporting the resolution of deployment issues through facilitation, knowledge sharing and challenge

Value to the customer

At West Somerset there has been a number of significant issues which have needed wider support from NHS CFH to resolve. The person acting as single point of contact was able to call upon colleagues to offer hands on support to move the project forward.

This has included:

• data migration support, removing it as a project risk
• delivering a 'Lessons Learned' workshop which enabled the trust to develop their cut over strategy to avoid issues which have affected previous projects
• high-level NHS CFH support for resolution of critical 'showstopper' issues
• fast-track approval of software moves between environments to keep project phases on track
• advice on functional defects and confirmation of plans for issue resolution in future releases
• test management to support trust during a critical test phase following the unexpected departure of their test manager issues

The support provided by the DST at West Somerset, as part of the broader Trust/HIS team, has been instrumental in ensuring that the Trust could set a live date safely and with confidence.

"The Deployment Support Team resource has provided information and advice directly from NHS CFH (whether commercial, technical, lessons learnt etc) as well as escalating issues where this has been required.

"This has really helped to bridge the gap between the local deployment team and NHS CFH central. In addition we have received excellent support for our data migration activities.

"The deployment support team's technical experience and understanding of the data migration issues we have had to address has really filled a skills and resource gap in our local team. Without your support we would not have finished testing on time."
Neil Steven, Head of Somerset Health Informatics