- Smart Healthcare, Friday 2 October 2009 12.28 BST
It has issued a statement that: "It has been a frustration for everyone at Barts and The London NHS Trust that our desire to meet the 18 week national target has been compromised by previous weaknesses in our information management and administration systems."
It added that the 26,640 patients concerned have all been seen by a consultant as outpatients within 13 weeks, adding: "There is no evidence that any patient has come to clinical harm because of the backlog."
The trust also said that the number of patients whose main treatment has not started within 18 weeks has been reduced and the trend is continuing. "We are committed to meeting the target by the end of the calendar year," it added.
The trust, which runs hospitals in central and east London including St Bartholomew's and The Royal London, is one of the few that has implemented the Cerner Millennium platform as part of the National Programme for IT.
"Barts and The London are working to address a potential backlog of around 23,000 patient records to determine those who have been treated within 18 weeks and those who have breached this standard," said a spokesperson for NHS London, the capital's strategic health authority. "The SHA is meeting monthly with the trust and its commissioning primary care trust to ensure that this backlog is addressed and extra support is being provided to make sure the trust validates these records quickly and accurately."
Problems with Barts' Cerner implementation were acknowledged in May by then health minister Ben Bradshaw. It was one of three acute trusts in London to go live with the first phase of the National Programme approved Millennium software.
In a parliamentary written answer on NPfIT patient record systems, Bradshaw told shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien: "At the Barts and The London NHS Trust some unresolved issues are being tackled as part of a wider comprehensive improvement programme that is addressing identified weaknesses in the trust's information management and administration systems."
