BT in talks to take over Cerner trusts in south

BT has confirmed it is in talks to take over responsibility for the eight trusts in the south with Cerner Millennium.

In response to questions from MPs at the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, Gordon Hextall, the chief operating officer and interim director of programme and systems delivery for CfH, said of the eight sites live with Cerner Millennium provided by Fujitsu: “Its no secret we are talking to BT about them taking responsibility for these sites.”

Hextall predicted that it would be July before any takeover arrangements could be finalised: “It will be a month before due diligence can be completed.”

After the PAC hearing Patrick O’Connell, BT Health’s managing director, confirmed to E-Health Insider, that negotiations were underway. “We’ve been asked to look at the eight trusts that have Cerner live.”

O’Connell added that the number could rise to nine if, as currently planned, Bath goes live in the south, as a final Fujitsu implementation.

Eight instances of the Cerner Millennium Care Records Service (CRS) software were installed at NHS trusts in the south of England before the local service provider Fujitsu walked from the contract re-negotiations resuling in CfH terminating the contract on 28 May.

On the longer term replacement plans for all areas of Fujitsu’s LSP contract in the south Hextall stressed that the decision was up to the NHS in the south, and said the search was on for “an alternative supplier”, a process he expected to take “a few months”.

However, he cast doubt on rationale of the ASCC route for an alternative LSP and gave no indication that any CRS system – other than the Millennium and Lorenzo products under development – would be countenanced.

“There are options available to trusts in the south of England,” said Hextall. “There are extant contracts with CSC and BT, offering known products at a known price. Their contracts allow them to supply product outside their areas. So there is a choice between the BT or CSC [CRS] system.”

The CfH interim director said that in mental health trusts could take RiO, a system several trusts in the south had expressed a strong interest in, or SystmOne from CSC. “In some cases they may actually get systems quicker than under Fujitsu,” said Hextall.

He said that the other option open to the south would be to do a procurement through the new ASCC framework for a new LSP “but that would take time”.

Asked about delays to the key CRS software from iSoft and Cerner, Hextall said: “Suppliers have certainly had some difficulty delivering product but we are in a much better place with Millennium, and Lorenzo.”

Hextall added that it had not proved possible to standardise product as much as originally intended, with trusts requiring a higher level of local configuration of software. “The level of customisation has proved much higher than we imagined at the beginning of the programme.”

The need for much higher levels of customisation from trusts was also a central message from Peter Hutchinson, head of Fujitsu public services, who, sitting alongside Hextall, told MPs that trusts had required far more customisation than had been provided for in the contract. This required Fujitsu to provide a much higher level of resource than it had calculated for, bumping up costs and causing delays.

“Part of the contract reset was to provide a greater level of flexibility to meet the needs of trusts,” said Hutchinson. This had been agreed in the negotiations, he said, but the NHS was unwilling to commit the additional money required.

How BT and CSC can implement CRS systems with the flexibility required by trusts, within available resources and to acceptable time schedules, may well be the subject of further parliamentary scrutiny.