NAO to investigate NHS IT payments to BT

MP Richard Bacon has successfully initiated a review of the controversial £546m NPfIT payment to BT

The National Audit Office (NAO) is set to investigate the National Programme for IT in the NHS (NPfIT) payment of £546m to BT.

The move follows a request from Conservative MP Richard Bacon, according to a blog post by Tony Collins on Computerworld.

"We can confirm that the NAO will be providing a memorandum for the Public Accounts following a request from MP Richard Bacon," said a NAO spokesperson.

NPfIT is the largest non-military IT programme in the world, costing £12.7bn so far; and the programme is run by NHS Connecting for Health (CfH).

The £546m deal, announced in April this year, was controversial, as there was some speculation that the Department of Health was paying a premium to keep BT on board.

Fujitsu and Accenture had already left the programme, and if BT had also left, CSC would have remained as the only service provider.

A CfH spokesperson said of the deal: "The contract extension renegotiated and agreed with BT followed all appropriate governance. The principle of payment on delivery has been maintained and continues to protect the taxpayer by ensuring suppliers are only paid when they have delivered."

Bacon insists that BT was overpaid by £400m and as a result has raised questions about the proper use of public money.

"While we don't comment on the commercial details, BT considers that the contract followed all appropriate governance," said a BT spokesperson.

"We are confident it reflects what we have been asked to deliver based on the requirements set by the NHS," they added.

"Of course we will fully co-operate with any further NAO report".

Some details of the overspend are outlined in Collins' blog. The NAO has reported to Bacon that the Department for Health paid BT £224.3m for 25 deployments of care record system Rio, including support until 2015.

However, NHS supplier Maracis has provided evidence that Rio has been deployed outside the NPfIT for less than £1m per deployment, including the same support timeframe.

This would suggest BT had been overpaid by as much as £200m for this alone.

Further to this, the NAO also reported that BT had been paid £182m for taking over from Fujitsu for providing seven NHS sites with the Cerner Millennium patient administration system.

NHS suppliers say that the seven sites could have bought new and improved systems for a maximum of £15m a site, or £105m in total.