SMS faces a rewrite of parts of Hiss

Northern General Hospital is considering arbitration to force supplier SMS to rewrite parts of its Hospital Information Support System (Hiss) to improve the system's performance.

Some of the Patient Administration System (PAS) modules in the Hiss - mainly in-patient, out-patient and waiting lists - are slower and more difficult to operate than the previous system, the hospital said.

The Hiss should have gone live last month, but this has now been postponed to December 1997.

Paul Richards, director of information management and technology at the hospital, stressed that parts of the SMS system work well, but where there are problems the hospital wanted the supplier to fulfil its contractual obligations.

'There remains problems with some of the PAS functionality and we're working with SMS to solve these.

Arbitration is an option that's available within the contract, but not one we'll use necessarily. We just don't want to let the supplier off the hook,' he said.