£550m GP IT deals go ahead
Department of Health initiative will give GPs a choice of software
The Department of Health is tendering for GP software deals worth up to £550m to give surgeries a greater choice of suppliers.
Under the original plan of the £6bn National Programme for NHS IT (NPfIT), in 2003, GP practice systems were to be provided through the five regional local service providers (LSPs).
But the GP General Medical Services contract agreed between the NHS and the British Medical Association (BMA), also in 2003, guaranteed individual surgeries could choose which IT system to use.
Under the GP Systems of Choice (GPSoc) initiative, announced last year and now going to tender, practices will be able to select either the LSP-provided software or from suppliers with framework deals.
GPSoc will help address concerns about the direction of travel of the National Programme, says Dr Gillian Braunold, GP national clinical lead for Connecting for Health, which runs NPfIT.
The deals will also help to overcome delays in the delivery of LSP practice systems and make the most of nationwide economies of scale, she says.
‘We will have a proper 21st century set of contracts with each supplier,’ said Braunold.
‘So instead of a Primary Care Trust such as mine having 180 different deals for all the different systems, there will just be, say, three for the three different suppliers.’
Software providers also support the plan because it ends the perceived regional monopolies created by the LSP-only system.
‘The NHS needs strong infrastructure at the centre, and ruthless standardisation at the data level so there can be different applications talking to each other,’ said Sean Riddell, deputy managing director at Emis, a major GP system supplier.
‘But it cannot have a mono-poly of application suppliers because that kills innovation and increases cost,’ he said.
But some say the scheme is only an interim measure.
‘GPSoc is a very good thing, but the ultimate aim is still to get everyone on the same system,’ said BMA GP spokesman Dr Paul Cundy.
‘The progression path is for us all to end up with systems doing the same thing, so they might as well be the same system,’ he said.
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