DH awards CQRS contract

Vangent has won a six-year, £30m Department of Health contract to develop a new calculating and reporting system to support GP commissioning.

The Calculating Quality Reporting Service will calculate the achievement of quality outcomes for GP practices and clinical commissioning groups.

The service will support up to 40,000 registered users across England and will replace the Quality Management and Analysis System, which calculates payments to GP contractors for their performance against the Quality and Outcomes Framework.

The CQRS will support both existing and new quality incentives and will use QOF data supplied by the NHS Information Centre’s new General Practice Extraction Service.

A DH report says Vangent is providing a “managed service” including development capability, initial and ongoing training and a help desk.

“We envisage that there will be substantial time savings for both commissioning organisations and service provider organisations in the automation of recording, checking, submitting and approving achievement for the services supported by CQRS,” a DH report says.

“CQRS will save the NHSCB 21,500 days of work, each CCG 72 days, and each GP practice seven days of effort per year.

“It has the potential, if all present ‘clinical’  locally enhanced services are supported, to save each CCG and GP practice 50 and 100 days respectively.”

Managing director for Vangent in the UK, Stephen Meyler, said it was a great honour to be entrusted with the delivery of CQRS.

“We look forward to leveraging our global capabilities and history of health IT innovation to deliver a mission-critical service for the NHS and general practitioners across England,” he said.

US company, General Dynamics IT, acquired Vangent in October 2011. Senior vice president of the health and civilian solutions division, Marcus Collier, said health IT innovation, including the development and application of next-generation analytics, was “fundamental to advancing healthcare reform initiatives around the globe.”

Vangent won the contract over Accenture in the final bidding. Capgemini and Tata Consultancy Services were also shortlisted.

The contract was signed on 1 December 2011. Service delivery is due to start in February to April 2013 and the contract runs to July 2018.