CSC has confirmed that it will continue to work with Accenture’s main software sub-contractors in the North east and Eastern NHS regions, and it plans to continue to deploy systems from The Phoenix Partnership into primary and community care.
Andrew Spence, the solutions director for CSC Alliance, told EHI Primary Care that following last Thursday’s announcement that it would take over as local service provider from Accenture in the two regions it wanted to “maintain Accenture’s momentum”.
“The contract with TPP will continue, we are going to continue that,” said Spence. “They have been very successful and we want to continue that.”
However he also said the overall aim remained to deliver integrated systems through iSoft. Spence also declined to be drawn on whether TPP systems would be offered into NHS trusts in the North West and West Midlands, but indicated that this was unlikely to be the case.
The CSC Alliance senior executive confirmed that CSC had a contract in place with EMIS for alternative primary care systems, though this had yet to be enacted due to lack of funding.
Spence also confirmed that Accenture’s existing supplier contracts, with the exception of its one with iSoft’s had been ‘novated’, or transferred, to CSC. He said taking over these contracts gave CSC access to new products including TPP, Liquid Logic and Map of Medicine. CSC did not take over Accenture’s iSoft contract because it instead preferred to extend its existing relationship with iSoft.
CSC’s solutions director said that it planned to offer Map of Medicine to NHS organisations in the NWWM region. Liquid Logic though will not be offered in NWWM for the electronic single assessment process (eSAP). “iSoft are planning to deliver eSAP through iPM and iCM,” said Spence.
He said that CSC didn’t want to stop deployments that were already underway in its two new regions. “We want to build on Accenture’s considerable progress in primary and community systems,” Spence added.
Spence said that projects that have had a Project Initiation Document signed off will continue and that CSC planned to move forward a small number of major new projects quickly.
“We should see early engagement with trusts in the North-east and East of England, we’ve already had meetings with trusts in the North-east,” he confirmed.
While declining to name sites Spence said that he hoped CSC would be able to soon announce implementation agreements for implementing patient administration system (PAS) at two hospital trusts in the North-east. “We’re looking to start two hospital PAS projects very, very quickly,” said Spence.
He added that plans were also in hand to “start an implementation of iSoft’s iCM clinical system”.
Referring to CSC’s track record to date in NWWM, Spence said: “We’re very proud of our track record of delivering PAS systems, we plan to build on that success and are planning a handful of additional projects over the next 3-4 months.”
CSC is likely to extend its relationship with System C – its main implementation partner in NWWM – for implementing iSoft systems in the two new regions. Spence described the company as “an extremely capable partner” and said “we will look to expand the relationship”.
Spence however ruled out any immediate recruitment bonanza to meet the task of delivering systems to three NHS regions. “We will do an appropriate amount of hiring as we will need to expand our capability, but there are 400-500 people within CSC who have worked on the programme, and have since moved on internally, who we can begin to bring back in.”