ISOFT7 agree £25m contract extension

The ‘iSOFT7’ group of trusts that chose to retain their iSOFT systems ahead of the National Programme for IT in the NHS has signed a four-year, £25m extension to their contracts with the company.

The ‘out of cluster’ trusts indicated that they would renew the deal in December 2012. However, programme manager Peter Cambouropoulos told eHealth Insider it had taken 15 months to get the details finalised.

The contract extension covers all seven trusts using the iSOFT patient administration system, iPM, and the four trusts with the clinical functionality, iCM. The contract also gives the trusts perpetual licenses to the products.

In 2006, CSC and iSOFT signed a deal that gave them responsibility for the seven trusts and enabled them stay with their existing systems instead of moving to Cerner Millennium, the strategic electronic patient record for London and the South.

The original contract with NHS Connecting for Health expired at the end of March last year, but was extended for 12 months while the group worked on a new deal.

“It was quite a difficult negotiation, we came at one stage within hours of going out to tender, but in the end we have managed to secure what I think is a very good deal for both parties,” Cambouropoulos said.

As part of the new deal, the trusts will hold their own contracts with the company. In total, 11 contracts had to be signed – seven for iPM and four for iCM. There were 23 chief executive signatures and 18 trust board chair signatures to gather, and more than 7,500 pages of contracts in all.

“The mechanics of fitting that all together has been horribly, horribly complicated,” Cambouropoulos said.

CSC had quoted a price for the entire deal and left it up to the trusts to determine how to apportion the cost.

“We went through an interesting time amongst ourselves debating about how to do that, but managed to agree a fairly complicated formula based on current usage, bed size and estimates of the fixed costs of running the service,” Cambouropoulos added.

“That was probably the time that was hardest to keep us all together,” he added. “One of the huge strengths of the iSOFT7 from the outset has been the way they have acted together in getting into this deal.

“Putting this extension in place, it’s really demonstrated how a group of very disparate organisations can come together and do some really good stuff and in the end get a really good deal.”

A key issue for the trusts was becoming the owner of their contract with the supplier. “That’s already proved its value because we have been able to make some small, but important changes to the contracts, which in the past had proved very difficult to do.”

Cambouropoulos said the trusts had received a “really good service” from CSC for the last three to four years, but both iCM and iPM were “showing their age”.

The iSOFT7 were already looking at other products in the market and expected to buy something new at the end of the four-year extension.

“We don’t want to replace our existing product with the same product. We want it to do something radically different and we’re at an early stage of engaging with our customer base about what that should be,” he added. “Whether the new tender will be the same group I don’t know.

“There will be a period where we move apart and do things at different speeds, but the IT directors have formed a very strong working relationship with one another.

“I would be very surprised if there wasn’t at least a cross fertilisation of ideas. I would also be surprised if, at some point, another collaboration of some kind didn’t come out of it.”

Cambouropoulos said when the group first entered into negotiations, it was quoted a much higher price of around £65m. It managed to reduce this down to £25m, and the trust boards have now signed that expenditure off.

The trusts that have re-signed are: Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust, The Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust, Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust.

The last three on this list do not have iCM.