Nelson Marlborough Health has become the second South Island district health board (DHB) to move onto the South Island Patient Administration Care System (SI PICS) that will integrate patient information systems across all South Island DHBs.
PICS replaces Nelson Marlborough Health’s 24 year old OraCare patient administration system and will eventually replace the nine non-integrated patient management systems used by DHBs across the South Island.
It will provide a record of patient activity, including community, outpatient and inpatient appointments, waitlist management, admissions and discharges, as well as alerts and allergies.
SI PICS is an initiative of the South Island Alliance, an alliance of the South Island’s five DHBs: Nelson Marlborough Health, Canterbury DHB, South Canterbury DHB, Southern DHB and West Coast DHB, described as “the commitment between the South Island’s five DHBs to work together to reduce inequities and drive change across the region.”
The alliance said the new system would provide more efficient, safer transfer of patient information and a more consistent approach to patient management and would be “rolled out to the rest of the South Island over time,” but gave no timeframe for this process.
SI PICS regional programme manager Nick Lanigan said SI PICS would enable a more streamlined patient journey through the region’s health services and enable seamless transfer of care anywhere in the region, including community to the hospital.
“This month’s launch has been four years in the making and was preceded by a huge amount of work by the regional SI PICS team, together with Nelson Marlborough Health and Canterbury DHB IT and information teams,” he said.
NMH SI PICS project manager Ross MacLennan said: “The switch-over process was incredibly intricate, involving more than 60 people who worked through the night. 280,000 patient records and 700,000 event records were migrated. Fortunately it all went like clockwork and we are very pleased with the result.”
PICS has been developed from an existing Orion Health product, Enterprise PAS, through a partnership between Orion Health and the South Island Alliance. The agreement with Orion Health to develop the new system was announced in February 2015.