DH finalises CSC deal

CSC and the Department of Health have signed a revised contract for the North, Midlands and East that the DH says will save the NHS another £22m.

The move marks the end of the long saga of talks between the department and the company over the future of its local service provider deal for the three clusters.

Under the National Programme for IT, CSC was contracted to deliver ‘strategic’ electronic patient record systems to the NME, but it has struggled to roll-out the Lorenzo EPR that was initially developed by iSoft.

In September 2012, the two parties signed an interim agreement that removed CSC’s exclusive rights to provide IT systems to the NME, in return for compensation from the DH, and an agreement from CSC not to pursue legal action.

The deal also made some central funding available for up to 22 trusts that may still want to take the system. So far, eight have agreed to do so.

The final contract, which was signed last week, has brought together the three original NPfIT contracts and the interim agreement into one contract.

It also underlines that CSC will no longer get paid if trusts decide not to take the company’s products.

The DH says it has already saved £1 billion on the CSC contract, but that the new deal will save another £22m by reducing the value of the contract and by only paying CSC for what it delivers.

In a statement, the company said: "CSC and NHS have signed an agreement that finalises the fundamental arrangements put in place in August 2012, reaffirming the foundation that enables hospital trusts throughout England to adopt the Lorenzo EPR.

"The new agreement does not contain any changes to budget or scope but does provide NHS hospital trusts that choose to take the system with greater flexibility, while helping to reduce administrative complexity.

"Three hospital trusts are already successfully running their day-to-day operations using the Lorenzo electronic patient record system, and six additional trusts have selected the system since August 2012."

The deal provides central funding for software and deployment costs to trusts wanting to take the EPR, if they can provide a robust business case.

Tim Donohoe, the senior responsible owner for the LSP programmes at the DH, told the Public Accounts Committee earlier this year that he estimated the lifetime cost of the CSC deal to be £2.2 billion.

EHI reported earlier this week that Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has become the first to go-live with Lorenzo since the interim agreement was signed.

The next trust due to go-live is Derby Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which recently delayed its deployment until March next year.

The three trusts using Lorenzo from the NPfIT era are University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham Women’s NHS Foundation Trust, and Humber NHS Foundation Trust.

Humber replaced Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust as the mental health ‘early adopter’ of the system, after Pennine pulled out of the programme in April 2011; triggering the contract talks that have just concluded.