HEALTH visitors, school nurses and other community services are set to move over to a new computer system next month.

The new electronic patient record (EPR) which has been rolled out across Royal Bolton Hospital over the last few months will be used by services elsewhere in the borough.

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust is aiming to implement the EPR system within community services, which are provided away from the hospital estate, by April 1.

But there are some concerns about the data, which is needed to get EPR up and running in the community, being ready on time.

The £30m contact for the new Allscripts Sunrise system was signed by the trust in August 2017 and rolled out last year.

Until now, different departments collated their records separately – but this new system allows the trust to develop an electronic health record for patients who have treatment at Royal Bolton Hospital or with healthcare professionals in the community.

The new system promises to introduce a number of benefits to patients and staff, including:

n A full history of a patient’s care

n More accurate communication between healthcare professionals, patients and carers

n Reduced clinical risk by ensuring clinical records are available, accurate, up-to-date and complete when the patient is receiving care

The system will also include advanced facilities to enable clinicians to provide a better overall service, for example, prompts for ongoing assessments.

This is the first step to a shared record of a patient’s care in the North West of Greater Manchester.