Emis faces multi-million pound penalty for GPSoC breach
- 22 January 2018
Emis has notified investors it expects to incur penalties “in the order of upper single digits of millions of pounds” after failing to meet unspecified contractual requirements in its GP Systems of Choice contract governing the supply of electronic patient record systems.
The clinical software systems provider failed to meet standards across three categories in its service-level agreement with NHS Digital regarding its Emis Web GP electronic patient record product, as supplied under the national GPSoC contract.
The company did not specify the areas in which it fell short, or incurred the penalties, however a spokesperson said they related to lower-priority system issues and reporting.
In a market statement the company, which is listed on the AIM market, claimed that neither patient safety nor patient data had been compromised as a result of the issue, which it said was identified during an internal review of its customers and product support processes led by group CEO, Andy Thorburn.
The company says the findings of this internal review have been conveyed to NHS Digital, which is now working with Emis to assess the scale of the issue and its “full service and contractual impact”.
Thorburn, who joined Emis in May 2017, said in the statement: “I am very disappointed to find that in this area we have fallen behind the high standards of customer and product support that NHS Digital and our wider customer base have rightly come to expect of us.
“We have committed to resolve this situation to the satisfaction of NHS Digital and our users as soon as possible.”
Emis provides essential clinical electronic patient record systems to 57% of all general practices in England under the GP System of Choice (GPSoC) contract. The GPSoC sets out detailed service standards that must be met to ensure the quality of the service that is provided to general practice.
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Emis faces multi-million pound fee for GPSoC contract standards breaches
- Emis failed to meet standards in three categories of its GP System of Choice contract with NHSD
- This related to “lower-priority system issues and reporting.”
- Failure to report standards results in “service credits” being applied, which amount to financial penalties
- Emis says it expects a financial impact of “upper single digits of millions pounds”
- TPP confident that data sharing-agreement with Emis is not impacted
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GPSoC includes terms requiring principal system suppliers – namely Emis, TPP, INPS and Microtest – to allow suppliers of third-party services to integrate with them.
GPSoC standards are reported monthly, with each service level within the contract given a target Any failure to achieve this target results in service points being applied, which are then converted into financial penalties.
Emis said it was too early to determine the exactly financial impact of the shortcomings, but expected it to run into the order of several million.
In a statement, NHS Digital said: “Emis Group have made us aware that they have not met some of their service and reporting obligations under the GP System of Choice contract. We are now carrying out our own detailed analysis of the situation with their full co-operation.
“Our immediate priority was to assess the extent of any clinical safety considerations. Our specialist clinical safety team, has concluded this assessment and there is no evidence that public safety or patient data has been put at risk as a result of this issue.”
A TPP spokesperson told Digital Health News: “Obviously TPP is not aware of the detail of Emis’s failings with NHS Digital. However, we are confident that our direct data sharing agreement with them is not impacted. In addition, this project remains in a pilot state within a controlled area of North West London. Our other interoperability projects via the GPConnect programme are accredited and coordinated by NHS Digital.”
16 Comments
So the data beast is not fed..
But step back.. the practice user interface for configuring these POL services is woeful . and the patient experience is different from both… but there needs to be granularity of record exposure.Documents could be a relatively non-controversial.
Fix some of those issues and uptake will rocket
i have heard from both GPSOC suppliers independently the continual assurance requests to NHSD does use “resource”
User requests should be the driver for innovation
Reward both for cracking on with the SLIP and GP connect.
Get work flow standardised in both and bring identical functionality into a core contract unless this is fixed the journey to paper lite will be difficult .
Stop screwing down the cash for the GP contract same rules don’t apply for GDE, and they don’t handle the daily numbers that primary care does.
Demise of LAN and local servers has impact on speed, so all new wizz ideas have to be shown to work on a practice up the end of a northern river valley .
Speed is everything.
So dont pull money away , empower the user groups / end users to focus and vote for things that help them deliver better care .and enrich the quality of the data .
difficult to determine if this and the Wales thing is co-incidental or by central design or just unintended FUBAR .
Lets restore some sanity
How does this sit with the news from Wales that EMIS WEB has been dropped as part of its recent procurement for GPIT?
Kenny – it adds to their general malaise, even though there is no correlation per se. The fine is likely the result of mis-reporting of patient-facing data, whereas the Welsh withdrawal is planned and described in their media release to the City this AM: “Annual revenues from the existing framework agreement with NHS Wales are approximately £2 million at a margin significantly below the Group average”. Given that Scotland and NI both operate a similar revenue model it will be interesting to see what EMIS elect to do with them….
This with other EMIS failings yet to be published are very bad news for the company. However, is perfectly true that the NHS Digital service specs are unrealistic and that EMIS have tap danced around avoiding paying the penalty of many prevous major outages – as have TPP.
The insane NHS DIgital drive towards centrally hosting all practice data without local copies to cope with comms outage is also a major factor. Data centres can be made very reliable (thus service availability is measured at their edge, yielding the 99.9xx% uptime often quoted). At the other end of a long vulnerable comms line, believe me, service availability and speed feels VERY different.
Internally EMIS are in a right mess, the result of several years mismanagement whilst chasing the dividend. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the beginning of the end for them. Sad but true.
between The Insider, The Outsider and INSIDE OUT, i think the angles on this story are well covered. OUTSIDE IN, where are you??
Why did NHS Digital report individual practice achievement in the public domain if they were aware EMIS reporting was incorrect
They didn’t – apparently EMIS discovered the error.
Would it not be better to have a suspended “fine” , payable on default of some long-missing enhancements, driven by user requests rather than NHSD driven
We need to decide on what should be in “core” GPSOC systems and not reliant on purchased add-ons
We need a vibrant GP market … the rise of NPfIT affected the dynamics IMO
Suppliers need nurturing and nudging at the same time shareholders want “their dividends”.. Quite a tight rope
An easier target to pick on rather than the plethora of hospital EPR systems that they funded thro NPfIT but don’t AFAIK have a common accrediation process
Piper, tune and banker
Actually, no IT business can provide the technology the NHS needs, even the really big players, but agree EMIS hasn’t the scale to get anywhere close. The attempt to construct a business that could touch all workflows within the NHS (primary, acute, community etc) was laudable, but myopic management has rendered it a failure. Although Ascribe is the most high-profile mess, there has been a systemic failure to integrate its software across all of the above.
It’s only a a matter of time before it’s acquired.
Yes, EMIS Web is a stable, 10 year old system, so this situation is due to management failings (generated from too much internal examination and removing experienced staff who would likely have spotted many of the problems) rather than system failings.
However, it’s more of a moot point as to whether there is a correlation between EMIS / NHS success. ITM EMIS management will be focused on propping up the share price with more big dividend payments, whilst finding a way of further reducing its exposure to the calamitous Ascribe purchase. There’s a financial announcement due out this week – will be ‘interesting’ reading.
Nice name. My point is EMIS is in a position to provide the technology the NHS needs… but it’s a position that they might not have the chops to maximise. Much of that stemming from poor leadership at the top of the company, not permitting good people to do their work.
Curious in what way the Ascribe purpose has been so detrimental to EMIS?
Total failure to meet financial goals?
Ascribe was acquired for £60M – a value not supported by its p/e at the time, in a market where NHS PAS renewals were pushed back from every 7-10 years to 10-15 years. Note McKesson’s departure from the UK market, and Sheerwater re-acquiring System C for considerably less than they had sold it for. Against this scenario Ascribe sales were falling and the business was written down twice in the first 24 months by nearly £20m i.e. acknowledging it was really worth £40m, and they had over-payed. The lauded synergies / mooted integration between EMIS / Ascribe never happened (architectures were quire disparate) and EMIS management really didnt know what to do with it. This is typical of legacy management with a surplus on its balance sheet / access to cheap credit, attempting to buy growth rather than new management which usually conducts a strategic review.
So, Ascribe continues to drag on a business that can’t find an organic way to grow itself. Although I don’t expect the fine to be as big as alluded to by EMIS, the price re-positioning (750-800p) is probably fair given its fundamentals.
I hope, beyond hope, that this is not the fall from grace. EMIS Group needs to buck its ideas up, push out the functionality customers want, and invest where it matters. EMIS’s success is the NHS’s success, the public needs the kind of technology EMIS can deliver.
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