- Smart Healthcare, Friday 13 November 2009 10.55 GMT
Health minister Mike O'Brien said that the agreed deployment cost for all Lorenzo services at South Birmingham Primary Care Trust, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust, Hereford Hospitals NHS Trust and Five Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust is £4.76m in each case.
For Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the agreed cost is £8.09m. In parliamentary written answers to his Conservative shadow Stephen O'Brien, the minister added that the average agreed deployment cost will be £6.47m per site.
These sums do not include local costs, such as preparation, deployment and support. "Information is not held centrally about the local costs, which will vary from trust to trust," the minister said. However, as of 30 September 2009 the local service provider CSC had been paid £434,000 for deployment activity at trusts installing Lorenzo products, and £27,117 for running costs.
Mike O'Brien also said that the highest number of concurrent users of the Lorenzo system at NHS Bury Primary Care Trust on 3 November, the day the system went live, was 93.
He also played down the likelihood of the DoH cancelling the contracts of iSoft and Cerner for electronic patient record systems. Asked by O'Brien if failing to introduce systems by the end of November constituted grounds for cancellation, the minister said: "Termination is a step that the department will only contemplate after every opportunity, and all possible assistance had been given to enable a contractor to recover its position.
"Achievement of the published criteria for progress in delivery of the Lorenzo and Millennium care records systems by the end of November will be assessed on this basis," he added.
