The 128 trusts that received picture archiving and communication systems under the National PACS Programme have been asked whether they want a new national contract or to procure future systems locally.
NHS Connecting for Health has a letter to trust PACS managers asking them to respond to a number of questions designed to identify whether there is a demand for a procurement framework.
The letter reminds managers that the local service provider contracts for PACS and radiology information systems will come to an end in mid-2013 for the North, Midlands, East and the South of England and mid-2015 for London.
It says this will leave a gap in the provision of these systems that needs to be addressed.
The questionnaire asks trusts to provide feedback on their current service, their aspirations for PACS, and any constraints on those aspirations.
Furthermore, it asks them to detail whether a local, local via central framework, or central procurement approach would be most effective.
The questionnaire is supported by a “statement of needs”, which trusts can use to discuss what should be kept, what could be retired and what adds value.
Among the needs already recognised by the Department of Health is the need to lower the overall cost of PACS/RIS systems, to have a more reactive relationship with suppliers, to be able to share images and reports with primary care, to improve integration between PACS/RIS and other administration and clinical systems, and to provide vendor neutral archives.
Neelam Dugar, chairman of the Royal College of Radiologists’ Imaging Informatics Group, told eHealth Insider: “Most people have complained about price.
"The LSPs also need to provide a better service. There just isn’t a supplier/user partnership.”
One trust IT director told EHI that at a recent meeting at which DH officials asked the audience whether they wanted the one particular LSP contract to be renewed, no one raised their hand to say ‘yes’.
The roll out of PACS across England has been considered one of the success stories of the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
In 2004, the DH said it would invest £60m to offer every trust PACS within three years from local services providers CSC, BT, Fujitsu and Accenture.
However, Dugar said that just because the roll out has been a success, it doesn’t necessarily mean a central procurement is necessary going forward.
She added: “Why do you need a central procurement – you don’t when we’ve already got DICOM standards.
"I don’t think there’s any real advantage of a central procurement unless they can provide value for money and in the past we’ve seen that many of these central contracts don’t.”
The DH confirmed that planning is being put in place to ensure clinical service continuity. It added: “The discussions are based on local choice which could include trusts going to market directly or extending an existing contract".
RCR Imaging Informatics Group spring meeting:
The challenge of making radiology images and reports integral parts of the electronic patient record will be one of the main themes of the Royal College of Radiologists Imaging Informatics Group spring meeting on 25 March.
Group chair, Dr Neelam Dugar explained: “The global emerging interoperability standard for EPR is the XDS (Cross Enterprise Document Sharing).
"We will discuss how by adoption of XDS and XDS-I – the equivalent standard for imaging – in multiple departmental systems we can create an EPR in a multivendor environment, in the same way as PACS has been created successfully in a multivendor environment."
Speakers include Dr Mohammed Hussein from Dell Healthcare, who will be speaking on the XDS registry and repository as the backbone of EPR, Ronan Kirby from Siemens and Dirco Van Norden from Rogan Delft.