ISoft7 reach £25m agreement

The seven “out of cluster” trusts in London and the South of England that signed a deal with CSC and iSoft to keep their patient administration systems have reached an agreement to continue with their contracts.

Letters of intent from the trusts – known as the iSoft7 – have been received by both CSC and iSoft. They confirm the trusts’ plans to continue running iSoft’s iPM out of CSC’s datacentre until 2016.

The trusts that have iCM will also have their licences and maintenance extended to a similar timescale.

E-Health Insider understands that that the iPM components, which include licences and services, will be purchased from iSoft by CSC on behalf of the trusts. The iCM components will be purchased by the trusts directly from iSoft.

The £25m deal will cover Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust; Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust; Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust; Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust; University Hospital Lewisham NHS Trust; and Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust.

Last week EHI reported that the iSoft7 were searching for alternative providers to host the systems because they, the suppliers and NHS Connecting for Health had failed to reach an agreement on the contract price.

The trusts put out a prior information tender notice after CfH said it would only pay one year of the contract until March 2012. This would have left the trusts to foot the rest of the bill themselves, something which they said they could not afford to do.

The trusts said that a formal tender notice would be published in the Official Journal of the European Union if an agreement had not been reached by the end of the week.

Now an agreement has been signed under which the trusts will pay for one year of funding. An iSoft7 source told EHI: “The details need to be sorted and the contracts novated from CfH back to the trusts, but I believe everyone feels this is the best outcome as it causes the least disruption.

“The service is certainly an improvement on what we had before and this is now a figure that the trusts feel is affordable.”

Earlier this year, CfH renewed a similar contract with McKesson for trusts using its software. It managed to negotiate a deal to provide 26 trusts with PAS support for the next four years for £36m.

ISoft was unable to comment but a spokesperson for CSC said: "CSC are committed to the healthcare market in the UK and view this pending contract as very important.

"Currently our discussions with the trusts have reached a positive conclusion and we will work with the trusts and CfH to agree a contractual way forward early in the new year."