Major changes at Connecting for Health

(By Richard Holway 10.30pm 10th March 09) Rather than write my own piece on the recent changes at Connecting for Health, I’d like to direct readers to the excellent article that Tola Sargeant (one of the best analysts to come out of the Ovum Holway stable!) wrote yesterday In Ovum Straight Talk – All change at NHS CFH. Tola has followed this project intensely from the start when we won a fairly major monitoring contract for Ovum with Richard Granger. After all these years, Tola must be the most knowledgeable analyst in the UK on the subject.

Under the reorganisation, as Tola says “NHS CFH will become little more than a delivery arm, with the strategic power resting with the Department of Health (DoH)”. The reorganisations “are the first visible changes made by Christine Connelly and Martin Bellamy, who were appointed last September in the wake of Richard Granger's departure from NHS CFH.”

These announcements do not affect the NPfIT contracts. But both BT and CSC are still in intense renegotiation over various parts of their contracts – not least for BT to take over the South of England Fujitsu bits. Resolution here is long overdue and must just hasten the move by some Trusts to ‘go it alone’ with their own solutions.