NPfIT exit costs still under discussion

The Department of Health is in talks with the Treasury and NHS trusts over who will pay National Programme for IT exit costs, after funding “important activities” for the first exit of a Cerner Millennium trust in London.

The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust confirmed to EHI that it had successfully migrated its data from BT’s London data centre to Cerner’s data centre last month.

Will Smart, the trust’s director of IM&T, said the trust had arranged with the Health and Social Care Information Centre to leave its contract early as a “proof of concept” for other trusts, and the HSCIC had covered its exit costs.

A DH spokesperson confirmed it had funded “a number of important activities to make the Royal Free’s exit possible – such as the secure transfer of data from their current supplier to their new supplier.”

They added: “This was a pilot approach and we are now discussing next steps with a range of stakeholders including the trusts and HM Treasury.”

Trusts have been waiting for some time to find out whether they or central government will cover the cost of exiting their NPfIT contracts, as EHI reported last October.

In a statement to EHI in April, the Department of Health said it is “supporting trusts who receive services from the BT local service provider contracts to exit in a safe and planned way,” but that costs are still being finalised.

The lack of clarity from government around these issues is reportedly holding up new contract signings between suppliers and trusts looking to move off their national contracts.

Smart said the trust will hold internal discussions about the lessons learned from the exit and the next steps in the process, with the information likely to be shared with other London IT directors.

Trusts with systems delivered by BT in London and the South of England have two years to choose a new supplier, sign contracts and migrate to new systems.

All six London trusts that deployed Millennium during NPfIT look set to stick with it. The official transition period runs from October 2014 to October 2015, but some trusts want to exit earlier.