BT takes over Cerner-Fujitsu NHS IT sites

(By Richard Holway 9.00pm 2nd Apr 09) Ever since Fujitsu and the NHS IT programme ended their £1.1b contract in the South last May (See my piece - Fujitsu pulls out of NHS Contract 28th May 08) , BT has always been the favourite to take over. According to the well-respected E-Heath Insider today, a deal was reached late on 31st March 09 for BT to take over the 8 sites running Cerner software (Winchester & Eastleigh, Surrey & Sussex, Weston Area, Taunton & Somerset, Nuffield Orthopeadic Centre, Milton Keynes and Worthing & Southampton NHS Trusts) . The same software as BT is installing in its London LSP. “Details of the deal, which may include taking a handful of further trusts live with Cerner, are due to be announced next week. The price tag for BT’s contract extension is rumoured to be in excess of £100m.”

But as we reported on 28th Jan 08 – BT Global Services and the NHS – Part 3 , it was not just the ex-Fujitsu sites that were being negotiated – it was the whole exposure that BT had to the NHS IT Programme. Readers will recall that BT Global Services had already had to announce provisions of £340m towards contract overruns on 15 out of 17 ‘problem’ contracts but had not announced the provisions required on the remaining two – one of which was the NHS. Rumours of the likely total provisions ranged all the way up to £1.7b. The fact that this agreement was nailed in the very last hour of BT’s Financial Year means that a more realistic provision figure can be announced with BT’s finals in May.

I suspect that BT will have negotiated hard (and certainly long!). They had a great bargaining chip with the Fujitsu sites as they were the only supplier capable of taking these over as the only other supplier left standing is CSC which uses iSoft software.

E-Health Insider suggests “The value of the contract extension awarded to BT is unknown but thought to be high”.

The NHS has been a sorry tale of woe for Fujitsu. I understand that a couple of weeks ago Fujitsu also lost their NHS Connecting for Health First Line Service Support contract.
The national helpdesk contract was initially awarded in April 2006. It has been live since March 2007 and was due to run until April 2013. However, it was understood to have suffered performance issues. The service will be moved to the NHS CfH Exeter site.