An NHS hospital trust is facing a £16m shortfall due to
problems with a patient record system provided by iSoft, the main
software supplier to the NHS’s £12.4bn National Programme for IT
(NPfIT).
The University Hospital of North Staffordshire NHS trust could
face losses of up to £16m if billing problems with the electronic
patient record (EPR) system provided by iSoft are not resolved by
March 2007.
In order to secure its finances, the North Staffordshire trust
must generate bills from the EPR system for patient treatments,
which are then paid by primary care trusts, the NHS commissioning
bodies.
The figures showing the risk of a financial shortfall of up to
£16m appeared in the trust’s month-four finance report, which
showed that £450,000 had yet to be recovered from the first quarter
of the year.
In a statement, the trust said the first quarter issue had been
resolved and the £450,000 had been recovered in full.
But it added that it was still working with iSoft “on issues
surrounding billing for the remaining three quarters of the
year”.
The trust said, “Significant progress has been made and the
trust is confident it will be resolved. This particular problem is
not about the functionality of the EPR system but about data
management within the data warehouse. The quality of the data
itself is not in question.”
The problems at North Staffordshire will add to fears about
iSoft’s delivery of its Lorenzo electronic patient record system to
three out of the five NPfIT geographical clusters. The system is
the basis of NPfIT’s key care record service component.
Delivery and implementation delays with its NPfIT systems forced
iSoft to post losses of £383m in August and the firm is also under
investigation by the Financial Services Authority. Its annual
meeting is tomorrow.