Publish date: 23 February 2024

The system upgrade is planned to start from 10pm on Wednesday 28 February and is expected to be completed by 8am on Thursday 29 February. During this time Rio will be unavailable.

Please read the information below which provides an overview of what you can expect from the system upgrade, including key changes. Ensure you have read this guidance in advance of the system upgrade to support you in using the new upgraded instance of Rio.

Image

You should also read the important information below about what you need to do to prepare for the Rio system upgrade and the business continuity arrangements in place whilst the system is unavailable. 

What you need to do

During downtime

It is essential that you have saved your work and logged out of Rio before 10pm on Wednesday 28 February 2024. Any users still logged in will be automatically logged off, which could result in lost work. 

From 10pm on Wednesday 28 February through to 8am on Thursday 29 February the system will be unavailable for use. Please record any patient information/activity on paper for entry into Rio once the system is available.

Beacon – the business continuity solution 

Beacon is a read-only business continuity solution that has been built for use whilst Rio is unavailable.

The tool will provide access to essential patient information to allow services to continue to function without a clinical system. It is not intended to provide the full electronic patient record or replace the functionalities found within Rio. Beacon will retain the past three months of clinical documentation and progress notes.

Beacon will be made available for use from 10pm on Wednesday 28 February during the period of downtime. 

You will be advised when Beacon has been made live and the link to the Beacon application will be sent out within an IT Service Desk notification.

To access the eLearning and for further information about Beacon, please visit the Digital Zone on YourSpace.

Planned admissions

If you are aware of any planned admissions to wards during the downtime period, please review your patient history prior to the system being taken offline and print and prepare admission assessments as required.

If you require any documentation that precedes this then this must be printed in advance of the planned downtime.

NEWS2

All wards and community nursing teams using NEWS2 have a stock of paper forms. Any paper NEWS2 charts used can then be scanned into Rio using the naming convention NEWS2 chart. As soon as the system is available, electronic NEWS2 forms must be completed for those who have scored 3 in a single parameter or a total of 5 or more and added to the electronic form. No other retrospective recording is required.

EPMA

Any new inpatient admissions or bed moves during the period of downtime need to be completed manually on EPMA. 

Legacy views

Please be advised that some of the legacy views available from Rio will not be immediately available when you log back in to the system. It is anticipated that the legacy views will be available by 4 March.

Reporting

The Trust’s Business Intelligence Team will work to facilitate reporting from the new upgraded environment. Some dashboard reports that pull information from Rio may not be available immediately but are expected to be available by 4 March. 

BiT Reports: BiT@merseycare.nhs.uk