iSoft GP users should not feel pressed to change

GP practices that use iSoft primary care systems should not feel pressurised to move to other systems despite media coverage of the troubles suffered by the company, says the British Medical Association’s General Practitioner Committee (GPC).

The GPC has issued advice to approximately 1500 GP practices that currently use one of iSoft’s primary care products, System 6000, Premiere and Synergy. In the advice they say practices may be concerned about media stories regarding iSoft.

The troubled company reported financial losses of £382m ten days ago and is being investigated by the Financial Services Authority for accounting irregularities.

However the GPC says iSoft has committed to be involved in the GP Systems of Choice project and the new accreditation process for primary care systems which is currently under development, the Common Assurance Programme. The committee says iSoft has also developed and deployed upgrades to support Choose and Book and the electronic prescription service and is fully involved in the GP2GP project.

The GPC’s advice adds: “Practices that use iSoft products should not feel pressured into making precipitate decisions to migrate to other supplier systems. Moving from any system to another is not an insignificant task. It can take up to 18 months for a practice to get used to a new system and some data is almost always lost or corrupted during the transfer. The current advice from the joint GPC and Royal College of General Practitioners’ IT committee is to not change system unless the practice can see a clear and manifest benefit from doing so.”

Dr Paul Cundy, co-chair of the joint GPC/RCGP IT committee, said the GPC wanted to act pre-emptively to ensure the difficulties iSoft are facing in secondary care are not used as an excuse to move practices away from iSoft’s primary care systems.