NHS contractor BT Capital Care Alliance and software
supplier IDX have successfully rolled out a new patient
administration system at Queen Mary’s Sidcup NHS
Trust.
The system is the first that Connecting for Health, the NHS
agency which manages the £6.2bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT),
has delivered in London after more than a year of delays.
The success will offer much needed breathing space to BT. In
October, Connecting for Health (CfH) chief executive Richard
Granger told Bloomberg news service that BT’s performance at QMS
would be an indication of whether its NHS contract was under
control.
IDX has already proved difficult to implement in some NHS
hospitals. Earlier this year, Fujitsu, local service provider to
the southern region of the NPfIT, cancelled its contract with IDX
after it failed in successfully rolling out the technology in any
hospitals.
Granger has already reduced payment to BT following delays on a
separate NHS contract to build a broadband network. In July he
warned that “predictable events would occur” if it did not get some
substantial functionality from IDX before the end of the summer.
This was widely interpreted as a threat to cancel BT’s contract for
London.