A health service trust has cancelled plans to buy software outside the £6bn National Programme for NHS IT (NPfIT) following last week’s changes to the region’s main supplier.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has stopped its procurement for patient administration systems (Pas) because Accenture, which was responsible for NPfIT in the North East and East of the country, has been replaced by CSC.
‘In collaboration with Connecting for Health, which runs NPfIT, and the North East cluster, the board of directors has signed off a business case to work with the CSC Alliance,’ trust chief executive Miles Scott told Computing .
According to NHS insiders, the delays to the rollout of the iSoft Pas by Accenture were behind Bradford’s decision to go its own way, because the contract for the trust’s existing software had been due to run out before Accenture could install the next-generation replacement.
CSC has had more success implementing iSoft Pas software in its existing North West and West Midlands contract, and is hoping to replicate its strategy in the two extra regions.
Individual primary care trusts are free to choose systems outside the National Programme, but these must be funded from local budgets.
Bradford is not the only organisation to consider other options. Earlier this year Wirral Hospital NHS Trust signed an agreement to use the Cerner solution implemented by Fujitsu in the South, rather than the local iSoft/CSC option. And last month Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust abandoned its Accenture/iSoft implementation because of continuing delays.
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