BT deal means RiO for those who want it

A small number of primary care trusts in the capital will not receive RiO under its reworked local service provider deal because they have chosen not to implement the system, according to NHS London.

The strategic health authority has told EHI Primary Care that it would “negotiate a deal” for those PCTs if they changed their minds and decided to deploy RiO in future.

A total of 29 out of 31 PCTs in London have already implemented RiO’s system for community and 27 of those 29 have also chosen to use RiO child health.

NHS London told EHI Primary Care that two PCTs will not get RiO but all RiO trusts have access to child health.

She said seven out of ten mental trusts have RiO’s mental health system and Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust is scheduled to give live with it in October this year. “Two trusts will not deploy RiO," she added.

The spokesperson said some PCTs had chosen not to deploy RiO as a strategic decision. NHS Tower Hamlets is one of the two trusts which decided not to take RiO, opting instead to use EMIS Web.

However the spokeperson added: “If community and mental health trusts change their minds in future we can negotiate a deal for them so they can have RiO.”

The renegotiation with BT, which has cut £112m from the original £1.1 billion LSP contract, means fewer acute trusts will now get Cerner Millenium.

In addition, there is the resitriction on RiO for those trusts that have not decided to go ahead with it so far. The contract reset also axed the requirement for BT to deliver new GP systems across the capital.

BT originally planned to deliver the Vision GP system from INPS to practices in the capital, but only 85 systems had been installed by the summer of 2008.

Since then, practices have begun to migrate back onto the GP Systems of Choice framework and to move from the BT hosted system to one hosted by INPS.

This week, a spokesperson for NHS London told EHI primary Care that 30 GP practices were still using INPS software hosted by BT. “They are to be migrarted to the INPS data centre under GPSoC,” she said.