EmailA new agreement BT and NHS London, signed on 1 April, removed £112m from the £1bn cost of delivering NPfIT systems. The Department of Health said this would mean some acute trusts would continue to use existing systems, rather than move to Cerner's Millennium suite of software as originally planned.
A letter from NHS London chief executive Ruth Carnall to health service staff involved in the London Programme for IT reveals that the renegotiation, known as Change Control Note 3, has also meant that BT will no longer provide systems for ambulances or GPs, with the latter now served through the GP Systems of Choice programme. The Map of Medicine system will only be licensed for a further 12 months, and the expansion of CSE's RiO software will also be curtailed.
"It will no longer be possible to provide the comprehensive solution that was anticipated in 2003," writes Carnall. "Cerner and RiO will now not be available to all organisations."
She concedes that for some trusts this will be welcome news: "I know that for some trusts a solution delivered through the programme was not the preferred route, but for others it will mean a rethink of their strategy."
Carnall points out that London already has 50,000 users of RiO, which has been implemented across mental health trusts and for which the capital will get two future software releases and regular new configurations. It also has 25,000 users of Cerner Millennium. "Despite the many challenges this puts us well ahead of the rest of the country," she writes.
"We now have a firm commercial basis for the new delivery model for Cerner," Carnall continues. "This was developed following the challenges faced at the Royal Free, which have been used to successfully roll Cerner out at both Kingston and St George's. This means that we have more flexibility to deliver a locally tailored solution that will meet the needs of the clinicians on the ground."
Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee, told The Guardian: "It is inconceivable that this can represent value for money for the taxpayer. The government are buying themselves out of jail, winning a little bit of time, and using an enormous amount of taxpayers' money to do it."
;
Comments