Health body’s encompass ‘go live’ success praise
Southern HSC Trust encompass programme director, Siobhan Hanna was praised at Thursday’s (May 29) board meeting of the health body, for the way she had spearheaded the implementation of the new digital healthcare record system on May 8.
Interim chief executive of the Southern HSC Trust, Steve Spoerry told board members: “I want to highlight the excellent work by literally thousands of our colleagues, in terms of the implementation of encompass.
“Siobhan has been the conductor and she deserves credit for that. It’s been a remarkable effort. Now, in the phase of post-implementation, the challenge at the moment is to ensure that we minimise the period of reduced activity for some groups of patients.”
Chair of the Southern HSC Trust board, Eileen Mullan, revealed how she had witnessed proceedings on ‘go live’ day, on May 8, when encompass was rolled out in the Southern HSC Trust.
She commented: “My reflection on that morning was the pure enthusiasm and excitement to get going, and there were people saying ‘We should have got going weeks ago, we were ready weeks ago’.
“There was not one person I met that was unhappy in any way. They were in such good form and really hungry to do this. That trajectory has just moved on and people are fully engaged.”
Trust director of Planning, Performance and Informatics, Elaine Wilson explained that the new IT system was a major step forward for the Trust: “We had a very successful ‘go live’ in relation to encompass on May 8, and we will continue to drive out the benefits of that system as we move forward.”
Siobhan Hanna too was very pleased with the way ‘go live’ had gone: “From a management perspective, the encompass implementation went extremely well in the Southern Trust, and much better than anybody had anticipated, and that is thanks to everybody getting their shoulder to the wheel.
“It’s taken everybody in the organisation to achieve what we have achieved. We have amazing staff on the frontline. The tenacity they showed through the change was absolutely phenomenal. We cannot thank them enough.
“We had six help hubs, two of which were staffed 24/7. They were also aligned to training hubs for training support. They were extremely well received by staff.
“They were also supported by ‘super users’ [i.e. staff already familiar with the new IT system] from other Trusts in England and Finland, and also our Epic American colleagues.
“That significantly reduced calls to the IT help desk, because we had that expertise for the first two weeks on site, so we’re grateful to all of them.
“We gradually reduced our help hubs over a two-week period, and closed our last help hubs in Craigavon on May 23. It was much earlier than we had anticipated to do so.
“So, things went from a client and health hub perspective much straighter than anticipated, and that’s thanks to everybody, including all directors across the Trust who worked shifts to man the hubs over that period.
Stating that it was “a really good news story for all of us”, she added: “We should not take more than six months to stabilise [the new system]. In fact, on the basis of how we are doing now, it will probably be three.”