Getting the Southern Health and Social Care Trust up and running with ‘encompass’, its new IT care record, involved a £10m investment, it’s been revealed.

Director of Planning, Performance and Informatics at the Trust, Elaine Wilson, outlined the investment into the new system was just over a quarter (27.4 per cent) of the Trust’s overall capital spend in 2024 / 25.

However, she explained that the move to the state-of-the-art new system had been a smooth one.

Presenting her year-end Report of Capital Investment at a recent board meeting of the Southern HSC Trust, the senior officer commented: “This is a look back at the 2024 / 25 capital spend, when we spent £36.5m of capital allocation from the Department.

Staff at Daisy Hill Hospital celebrated on May 8, as encompass, their new digital healthcare record system, went live. Photo: Southern HSC Trust

placeholder image — Staff at Daisy Hill Hospital celebrated on May 8, as encompass, their new digital healthcare record system, went live. Photo: Southern HSC Trust

“The vast majority of the money comes down to us for specific schemes, either major capital schemes, or ring-fenced capital funding. Those ‘invest to save’ ones are also allocated by the Department in relation to ring-fenced projects.

“So, of the £36.5m, at least £6m of it is for our general capital, which is our smaller schemes, which require us to invest in our medical equipment, our digital services, the transport fleet that we have, and our general estates work, so a relatively small pot of money for doing those things.

“We had a large number of schemes actually taken forward in-year. The progress against those was significant.

“A significant amount of our spend, obviously this year, was in relation to encompass. About £10m of that £36.5m was for getting ourselves ready for encompass. And that was a really successful programme.

Southern HSC Trust director of Planning, Performance & Informatics, Elaine Wilson. Credit: Southern HSC Trust

Clinical negligence costs Southern Health Trust £7.3m in past year

“We will have significant pressures as we move forward, in relation to replacing all of these digital devices that we bought for encompass, and that will continue to cause pressures as we move forward.

“And we know that the general capital allocation to the Trust, as we move forward, is going to be challenging alongside that revenue allocation.

“Within the report as well, we’ve highlighted some of the funds that have to be handled back at year-end, and we look at those in some significant detail to ensure that we minimise that as we move forward into next year.

“But there were a couple of specific things that happened at year-end, [including] trying to get delivery of all of the significant investment for encompass.

“That meant that we had to defer some of that money into 2025/26.

“We have also re-looked at the Capital Allocation Group, which is the group that approves any of the allocation of capital within the Trust to go forward to the business-case stage.”