In a parliamentary written answer on 1 June 2009, health minister Ben Bradshaw said the figure was based on the lifetime value of the work at 2004-05 prices, as altered by the recent contract change notice.
BT's work in the National Programme for IT's southern region covers eight acute hospital sites which have begun to use Cerner's software, a further four which have committed to installing it, and 25 mental health and community health sites using RiO software.
Bradshaw said in April that that BT would receive an £92.8m advance for its work in the south, to be deducted from its total payment.
Victor Almeida, Kable's senior health analyst, described the value of BT's LSP contract as an "oddity", pointing out that the 12 acute and 25 mental and community trusts represent a small proportion of the 93 NHS trusts in the southern region.
Fujitsu's contract, which held the southern LSP deal until last year, was worth just £896m, but BT's contract covering just 37 trusts is worth 61% of that value.
Bradshaw's figures also confirm the value of BT's Spine contract as £889m, a figure that has been released previously. Almeida pointed out that the original value was £620m, so this has increased by 43%.
Connecting for Health said this reflects additional work for new requirements and additional functionality, including support for the delivery of Payment by Results, meeting the 18 week target for referrals from GPs to hospitals, and development of the Secondary Uses Service.
"It is possible that NPfIT will cost more than the widely quoted £12.4bn, but the unforeseen expenditure should refer mainly to CRS implementation at the local level. It does not make sense that extra monies are allocated to one sole company," Almeida said, referring to BT, which is responsible for both contracts.
