East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust

(asked on 10th September 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients were affected by the failure of the Lorenzo software system at East and North Herts Hospital NHS Trust; and whether his Department is aware of any harm caused to patients by that failure.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 13th September 2018

In July 2018 East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust declared a Serious Incident after it learned that a significant number of discharge summaries were not sent to patients or to their general practitioners (GPs) from an emergency department following the patient’s discharge from the Trust.

Between September 2017, when the Lorenzo software system was introduced, and July 2018 around 48,000 patients were discharged from the Trust. Of these, there are approximately 14,600 records where it is not clear if a discharge summary was written and sent. The number of patient safety records affected is still under review.

The Trust has set up a Task and Finish action group – which includes representatives from the Trust, GP practices, and the East and North Hertfordshire Clinical Commissioning Group – to look at the current status of unsent discharge summaries and to provide clinical and operational oversight on managing the distribution of these summaries. The group is also agreeing communications to GPs, the priority order for sending the summaries, and the process for harm reviews.

From its investigations and discussions to date, no specific harms as a direct result of this incident has been by the Trust; however, the Department expects the situation to be kept closely under review.

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