The dates for further NHS sites to go live with new Cerner clinical systems from Fujitsu under the NHS National Programme for IT have slipped again, with further go-lives now not expected until July and August.
Following the initial fraught implementation at Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust a lot of attention has focused on when further NHS sites would receive Cerner’s Millennium software from Fujitsu. The Japanese company is the prime contractor, or local service provider (LSP), for the NHS IT upgrade in the South of England.
E-Health Insider has learned that Fujitsu is now planning that four further ‘instances’ of Cerner Millennium will go live by the end of August. The planned health communities are Weston, Bath, South Bucks, and West Somerset.
EHI has been told that the delays largely stem from the significant revisions and amendments that have had to be done to the Homerton and Newham version of Millennium, which was originally to have been delivered as the out of the box solution in the South – the so called release 0 product.
By contrast the Release 1 product that subsequent sites in the site are to get is said to have been through "a formal requirements phase".
Because the NHS required changes "the working assumptions for delivery changed" a senior source in the South told EHI. "There have been a number of changes of requirement."
A spokesperson for Weston Area Health NHS Trust confirmed to EHI that plans had gone back: "We had been planning for the end of June and we have experienced a minor delay into July. This is due to the rigorous process we are all going through to make sure go-live is successful."
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Royal Bath Hospitals NHS Trust told EHI "The NHS CRS is due to go live at RBH around four weeks after successful deployment at Weston."
Asked whether the trust had a firm date yet the spokesperson added: "I’ve never had a firm date, and the trust’s staff have never had a firm date but we will hopefully find out soon."
A source close to the project said that the only thing that should now lead to any further revision of deployment dates would be data migration issues, but added that this would only be a couple of weeks if it did occur. They added that the delays to date "were not about the Cerner product".
They added: "Once we’ve got these next four sites in those that follow should be like shelling peas".
When Fujitsu signed a contract replacing its original clinical software supplier IDX with Cerner in September 2005, it outlined ambitious implementation plans for a rapid roll-out. These were based on installing Millennium at seven sites by April 2006.
Planned dates for implementations in the South have steadily slipped as 2006 has progressed. In March EHI reported that the implementation of the Cerner Millennium CRS solution had been put back to May at RBH, a date that has now moved to August.
Fujitsu is likely to find the latest targets challenging due to the impact of summer holidays on the NHS with its generous leave entitlement.
In a related development the Guardian newspaper is today reporting that because the NHS in southern England was unable to meet an obligation to second 50 full-time employees to Fujitsu they will now have to pay a total of £19m to the company.
The Department of Health said: "An agreement has been reached to buy out the liability at a cost of £19m in 2006-07 as NHS trusts have decided not to supply the staff resources."
The clause to second NHS staff to LSPs is thought to exist in each of the five regional contracts covering England.
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