Accenture completes handover to CSC

Management consultancy Accenture will today complete its hand over of two separate billion pound NHS IT contracts to Computer Sciences Corporation.

Sources close Accenture suggest that the handover was completed at midnight Sunday, while a CSC spokesperson said that the arrangements would be completed by this evening.

The change comes three years after Accenture won two prime contractor deals under the NHS National Programme for IT: a £1,099m contract for the North East of England, and a £934m deal for the Eastern region. Under the two deals Accenture was to upgrade clinical IT systems, providing hospitals and clinics with a strategic integrated Care Records Service.

Accenture signed with iSoft to deliver the CRS system, but three years and many delays later the US consulting giant parted company with the DH NHS IT agency, Connecting for Health (CfH).

In March 2006 Accenture made a £250m loss provision against its NPfIT contracts citing “significant delays by one of Accenture’s major subcontractors in delivering software”.

After widespread rumours of strains in the relationship in September 2006 Accenture and CfH finally announced they were to split, with a settlement agreed that saw the US firm pay to walk away from the two LSP contracts, which were transferred to CSC. Accenture, however, retained lucrative contracts for delivering Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) across its two former NHS regions.

CSC has yet to detail its implementation plans for the North East and Eastern regions but has so far completed 10 major implementations of patient administration systems in its existing North West and West Midlands region.