Catherine McDonald, deputy chief executive officer and chief strategy officer at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (Credit: Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS FT)
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is experiencing data validation issues that could delay patient care, following migration to a new patient administration system (PAS).
Since the upgrade to the latest IMS MAXIMS PAS in June 2025, the trust has reported “areas where data has been delayed or is currently unavailable” according to a board paper, published on 4 September 2025.
It adds that the emergency department data backlog “highlights the need for robust contingency planning during digital transitions”.
Andrew Roach, chair of the Finance and Performance Committee at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, said in the board meeting that the PAS migration has “caused data validation issues, particularly affecting referral to treatment (RTT) metrics and patient pathways”, which are compromising “the accuracy of performance reporting and may delay patient care due to data inconsistencies”.
RTT is the process for managing a patient’s journey from the initial referral by a GP or other clinician to the start of their first consultant-led treatment, which must be completed within 18 weeks.
The Finance and Performance Committee told board members that “a regular meeting is taking place between the data services team in business intelligence and the income team in finance to identify any issues with the dataset and feed these into the PAS supplier for amendment”.
Catherine McDonald, deputy chief executive officer and chief strategy officer at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals told Digital Health News that the trust’s legacy PAS system, also provided by IMS MAXIMS did not contain RTT functionality and was managed and tracked outside of the system, whereas it is auto calculated in the new system.
“In June this year Blackpool Teaching Hospitals said goodbye to a PAS which was first introduced in 1992 and migrated to a new system called IMS MAXIMS, which the trust has been using in the Emergency Department since 2017.
“The new and old system functionality is very different however there are robust systems in place for identifying and fixing any errors that occur.
“Most importantly the new system has improved data quality, efficiency and data sharing, enabling us to enhance our ability to provide caring, safe and respectful care for our patients,” McDonald said.
A spokesperson for the trust said that teams are working hard to validate the data, improving accuracy and exploring options to create extra capacity to increase the validation rate.
They added that Blackpool Teaching Hospitals carries out monthly harm review audits to help spot and resolve issues.
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals is one of the last remaining acute trusts expected to miss the March 2026 deadline to have an electronic patient record (EPR) under the Frontline Digitisation programme.
In May 2025, NHSE awarded a £13.3m ‘tiger teams’ contract to KPMG to support trusts which are not track to implement an EPR in time.
The trust’s latest board paper mentions £7.2 million in capital expenditure for an EPR but does not set out any implementation plans.
Digital Health News contacted IMS MAXIMS, for comment.
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