CSC and Fujitsu NHS contract resets continue

Negotiations to reset the local service provider contracts in the North, Midlands and East of England, plus the South of England have still not been finalised.

E-Health Insider learned this week that a 6 May deadline for the completion of the contract with LSP Computer Sciences Corporation has passed unmet. Both Connecting for Health and CSC told EHI this week the contract reset had not yet been signed.

A memorandum of understanding on the new CSC/CfH contract was agreed in early March.

A board paper from North West Strategic Health Authority (SHA) says it has “achieved the inclusion of ‘interoperability’ i.e. exchange of patient data between existing GP systems and Lorenzo as a key strategic change in the contract”.

The reset contract will also focus on a agreeing a new “outline implementation plan (OIP) for all organisations up to 2016, based on new Lorenzo 4 releases”. It will in addition set a sechedule for roll out of maintenance release updates to existing iSoft patient administration systems (PAS).

Delays in the delivery of PAS maintenace releases by iSoft and CSC are said by the SHA to be causing problems “the delays in this area are now impacting on several areas of our detaield delivery plan”.

The impact of the delays in software delivery and the contract reset in the North, East and West of England is shown in deployment statistics from the NHS North West show, which show that during March no new systems were deployed in the area by CSC.

In addition to delays in the North, East and West of England, there has still been no announcement about the stalled contract reset with Fujitsu for the South of England which has been underway for ten months.

In late March health minister Ben Bradshaw said further development of the Cerner Millennium product remained on hold until deadlocked contract negotiations are resolved.

“The development of the Cerner Millennium by Fujitsu in the South of England, where eight hospitals are using the Release 0 version of the software is the subject of a current contract reset.”

The reset process, which began in July 2007, set January 2008 as the deadline for negotiations between Fujitsu and the Southern Programme for IT to be completed.