Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 2 October 2024
219. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Health to detail the plan, timescale and the costs for providing the necessary electronic patient records for patients of the new National Children’s Hospital. [39216/24]
View answerThe new National Children’s Hospital (NCH) will operate as a ‘digital hospital’ as a result of the investments in an enterprise level Electronic Health Record (EHR) system and related applications. All children treated at NCH will have a full digital health record. Parents and guardians will be able to view their children’s health record, review appointments, receive reminders, and access other digital services via a patient app.
The NCH EHR will enable delivery of more timely, coordinated, safe and efficient patient care; enable multidisciplinary teams through access to a shared view of the patient record; reduce medical errors through access to clinical decision support tools, medications and diagnostics reports; reduce avoidable readmissions and average length of stay; reduce time wasted by staff by streamlining the ordering of tests and notifying them of results; thus, reducing of cost of care delivery.
The EHR system was chosen by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) following an extensive open procurement process, and was selected based on the clinical and operational requirements of the new hospital, as the national specialty centre for the provision of paediatric care. Ensuring the requirements of clinicians, health care professionals and patients was the number one priority when choosing the EPIC electronic health record system for NCH.
The implementation of the EHR system at the NCH is a complex process that involves several stages, including planning, selection, customization, training, and deployment. The provision of an EHR System is well advanced with the design phase complete and configuration phase now well advanced. The next phase is testing and commissioning, and these will be complete in time for the opening of the hospital. There will be a programme of post go live support and system optimisation over the course of 2026 and 2027. When complete, this will be the most extensive EHR deployment in Ireland to date.
The timeline for the delivery of the EHR system is aligned with the handover of the new facility and the period provided for the commissioning of the new hospital.
The total cost of the delivery of the EHR system at NCH, that was approved by government in Q1 2024, is €95.51m. These costs are subject to ongoing review and may be impacted by delays in the handover of the hospital from the main contractor BAM, as this will result in an extended timeline for delivery of the EHR. During any delay, external vendor costs are very tightly managed, but the cost of internal, specialist hospital staff assigned to the delivery of the EHR are impacted as these staff cannot easily be stood down and ramped up again on short notice.
Whilst there is a focus on the capital project and its delivery, we must not lose sight of the fact that the NCH project will deliver world class facilities that will improve and prioritise medical outcomes for the nation’s sickest children, while bringing about transformational change to the delivery of healthcare for the children of Ireland for generations to come.
