REVEALED: The breakdown of costs of Addenbrooke's Hospital's £200m Epic IT system

Care Quality Commission found the system was plagued with issues, while its deployment had left some staff feeling confused, bullied, incompetent and ashamed

Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was put into "special measures" by health regulator Monitor just a few days ago, after over-spending an average of £1.2m a week, in part due to its new online patient-record system, which has been fraught with problems.

Addenbrooke's and Rosie hospitals in Cambridge, with are part of the Trust, had reportedly spent as much as £200m on the e-Hospital system, provided by US firm Epic.

But Computing couldn't understand how the organisation - which has a rapidly growing financial deficit that is forecast to hit at least £64m this year - could have spent this enormous sum on a system which has given the Trust more problems than solutions.

So Computing got in touch with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust for a breakdown of the £200m deal.

A spokesperson for Addenbrooke's Hospital said: "Yes the e-Hospital system costs £200m, but that is over 10 years. £60m is Epic and £140m is the infrastructure - computers, Wi-Fi, handheld devices. The cost of keeping the old system - 12 different ones - would have cost in excess of £10m a year."

This would mean that the overall costs could be said to be only £100m over a 10-year period, if you discount the £100m it would have cost to maintain the old systems during that time.

However, when Computing asked the spokesperson if these old systems were still in place, and therefore would still need to be maintained, the spokesperson said that they were still in use, and that the aim was to migrate away from them. Data is still being transferred from the old systems to the e-Hospital system.

Some of the old systems, the spokesperson said, were installed back in 1994, with support ending in March 2015.

The spokesperson said that this was one of the reasons why Addenbrooke's Hospital had to move to a new system, for which software is provided by Epic, and hardware by HP.

"The reason we did it was to [improve] patient care and the benefits are accruing, and the financial benefits are there as well," the spokesperson said.

"We have done what we had to do anyway - yes we are first with Epic in the UK but over half of patients in the US are on Epic," the spokesperson added.

A Care Quality Commission report published earlier this week delved deeper into the issues that Epic had caused Addenbrooke's Hospital. It found that the implementation of the Epic system had caused confusion among staff. Staff didn't know how to deal with remaining paper records, which could not be stored in Epic.

CQC also found that Epic had been producing inaccurate discharge information, leading to a risk that patients would not receive appropriate follow-up care.

Addenbrooke's Hospital's spokesperson said the issues they faced were similar to those seen by Stanford Hospital in the US.

"Stanford Hospital said that we are in a similar place to where they were at this point," the spokesperson said.

The assumption is that Stanford Hospital has managed to eradicate any issues it initially had with the Epic system.

The new IT system was also found to have a detrimental effect on staff; three members of staff told CQC that they "felt bullied after raising concerns about patient safety following the implementation of Epic".

Two members of the administration and clerical staff, meanwhile, told CQC that they had been made to feel "incompetent" in their role and had feelings of being "ashamed" of the quality of the work they were able to produce through Epic.

Addenbrooke's Hospital's spokesperson told Computing that the vast majority of hospital staff were satisfied with their roles, but the spokesperson added that the organisation would be looking into these claims.

The Epic system implementation has all of the hallmarks of yet another public-sector IT disaster. Computing documented its 10 worst-ever government IT projects last month.