It will cost £7 million to fix an IT problem which has led to up to 14,600 patient discharge summaries not being sent to GPs by the East and North Herts NHS Trust.
The trust, which runs Stevenage’s Lister Hospital and Welwyn Garden City’s The New QEII Hospital, declared a serious incident last month because the problem could mean patients have missed medical tests, scans or appointments.
The problem stems from a new electronic patient record system installed last September and, since then and July, there are about 14,600 records where it is not clear if a discharge summary was sent.
A Task and Finish group is managing the delivery of unsent summaries and agreeing the process for harm reviews.
Jackie Doyle-Price, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care, said: “The current estimate made by the NHS Trust for the cost of the work required to stabilise its IT systems is £7 million.”
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