Paul Richards to head McKesson UK ops

McKesson UK has announced that Paul Richards has been appointed as the managing director and chief operating officer designate for its acute business unit.

Richards is a well-known figure in NHS IT. He worked for trusts in Derby and Sheffield before moving to Torex and iSoft, where he became group operations director.

He joins McKesson UK from Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, where he was MD for Europe, and will take charge of the company’s Medway patient administration system and maternity products, and McKesson’s Horizon Enterprise Visibility bed management system.

In a statement, Richards said: “The NHS has been through a period of dramatic change and there is now a real opportunity for trusts to gain real efficiencies and improvements in patient safety through the implementation of future-proof IT systems. I see McKesson’s solutions as being at the core of this change.”

McKesson announced an £87m bid for System C in March last year. The deal united System C’s Medway software and proven deployment capabilities with the US company’s customer base and financial strength.

An immediate priority was to encourage the 26 NHS trusts using McKesson legacy products under a support deal with the NHS to migrate to System C systems.

This week, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust became the latest trust running McKesson’s Totalcare to announce that it would be buying the Medway PAS as the foundation for a full electronic patient record.

However, as a McKesson company, System C has also picked up a number of other customers looking for PAS replacements and to run PAS-Plus projects.

In April, it was announced that Markus Bolton, the co-founder of System C, and Dr Ian Denley, its chief executive, would leave the company in July.

Charmaine McDonald, who returned to the UK from the US to act as interim chief operating officer of the acute business unit, will work with Richards until April next year.

Patrick Carter, chair of McKesson international group, said the company was “delighted” with Richards’ appointment. “We believe [he] is precisely the right candidate to lead this business in the next stage of its growth.”