Ipswich to get £14m for Lorenzo

The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust expects to receive nearly £14m in government funding for taking CSC’s Lorenzo electronic patient record system.

EHI exclusively revealed last year that an interim deal between the Department of Health and CSC would give the first ten trusts who committed to taking the system before April a signing-on bonus of £1m, as well as up to £4m in implementation expenses.

According to The Ipswich’s business case being presented to the board tomorrow, the trust expects to get the £1m incentive with 20% “payable on approval of the investment case”, as well as up to £3.1m in deployment support.

The trust will receive centrally-provided funding of nearly £5m in deployment charges and £4.7m in service charges for the full EPR over five years.

“In order to claim deployment support the trust will submit monthly reports of resource used and expenditure incurred to Connecting for Health,” it says.

The Ipswich would invest capital of just £300,000 to take the system. However, it plans to retain the service for a further five years following the period of initial funding support at a cost of £750,000 per year.

Subject to approval of the final version of the business case in tomorrow’s meeting, Ipswich plans to fully implement Lorenzo in 2014.

It expects to receive sign-off on its full business case by the ‘Department of Health Programme Board’ on 4 April.

An interim deal signed between CSC and the DH in September removed the company’s exclusive rights to be the only provider of clinical IT systems in the North, Midlands and East of England.

However, it meant the DH would continue to fund trusts in the region that wished to procure and implement Lorenzo.

The DH also introduced an Incentive Fund. This means trusts that sign-up to take the system before March being given £1m for implementation expenses.

NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson was due to face questions from the Public Accounts Committee about the incentive payments earlier this month, but the questioning was postponed until further notice.

Four other trusts have confirmed their intention to implement Lorenzo. These are: Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust and Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Walsall Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust had been due to decide which system to deploy on 28 March, but told EHI that decision had now been delayed.