BT risks losing NHS contract

BT must start meeting its London NHS commitments or risk losing its £996m Connecting for Health (CfH) contract, says NHS IT director general Richard Granger.
In an exclusive interview with Computing, Granger acknowledges that there are considerable implementation problems in the capital, and blames the supplier's handling of subcontractor IDX.

'BT has significant problems: its management has not been strong enough and IDX's delivery has not been good enough,' he said.

'BT had better get me some substantial IDX functionality by the end of summer or some predictable events will occur.'

BT is not being fined for missing the targets for London, but will not be paid until it delivers working systems.

Fujitsu Services, the equivalent provider in the South region, recently cancelled its deal with IDX to provide the next-generation patient administration systems needed for hospitals to make the most of the national electronic bookings, prescriptions and patient records systems being developed for the £6bn CfH programme (Computing, 2 June).

Granger says the situation over IDX shows that the contracts carry a low financial risk. And Fujitsu's decision, while likely to exacerbate delays in the South, will not cost the NHS.

'We have service-based contracts, and the prime contractors need to obtain the software to deliver that service,' said Granger.

'No money has been lost by the NHS or the taxpayer,' he said.

Overall, CSC in the North-West has been the best-performing major supplier. It has installed 16 upgraded patient administration systems in the three months from March to May, compared with the single next-generation system in place in London.

But even CSC's performance is not good enough, says Granger.

'I am impatient to get the NHS into an environment in which the majority of appropriate information is moving digitally,' he said.

But he adds that CfH has made considerable progress despite the delays. 'Most major programmes would not have delivered any user value at this point, but we have about 350,000 people using things we have shipped in the past 12 months,' he said.

'More than 30,000 clinicians are now registered on CfH systems, and a couple of weeks ago we passed the 1,000 concurrent user point.'