Executives at some IT suppliers say their companies have
wasted money bidding in an open competitive tender when an NHS
foundation trust had already chosen to buy the Cerner electronic
patient records system.
The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust decided to buy the Cerner
software last July - and went out to open competitive tender the
following month, Computer Weekly has learned.
Bidders spent up to £250,000 each on at least three months of
work to win the contract, which included attending workshops and
re-submitting proposals and prices as the competition
progressed.
Contenders included iSoft, Intersystems and GE.
Minutes dated 29 July 2008 say that Royal Berkshire's board
resolved to seek a strategic partner "through which Cerner software
could be procured and implemented".
But the same board minutes say that the US University of
Pittsburgh Medical Centre was already the "primary choice to be the
trust's strategic partner". The Pittsburgh Medical Centre uses and
markets the Cerner system.
Despite this preference for the Cerner software and the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre as strategic partner, the
Royal Berkshire advertised the following month a contract to
"supply, implement, and maintain an integrated electronic patient
record solution with related training and support services".
The advert was placed in the
Official Journal of the European Communities on 12 August
2008.
Not having seen the board minutes at that stage, suppliers took
it that the trust's board had an open mind. Teams from the
suppliers worked over Christmas 2008, to tight timescales, on
finalising their bids.
Royal Berkshire has now
chosen the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre as its
preferred partner to deliver a Cerner electronic patient records
system. The purchase is outside of the NHS's National Programme for
IT and is expected to cost at least £14m over three years.
Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has
also opted for Cerner with the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Centre as strategic partner.
A spokesman for the Royal Berkshire told Computer Weekly, "We
initiated a brand new procurement process for an electronic patient
record in August 2008. This was a fully compliant OJEU [Official
Journal of the European Communities] process with a comprehensive
output-based specification, which defined the trust's requirements
in detail.
"This large-scale exercise involved a great deal of investment
by ourselves, and our workforce devoted thousands of hours of work
to ensuring the best possible solution to our needs was
identified.
"Our clinicians and operational staff designed from scratch new
specifications. Our doctors and nurses developed detailed
requirements for their own patients and for the assessments and
treatments which they deliver. All of this work was generated
afresh for the new procurement process.
"Each bidder was given equal opportunity to demonstrate their
ability to meet the detailed specification and our clinicians were
tasked with selecting the most robust solution to meet their needs.
Throughout the process we followed the Office of Government
Commerce's competitive dialogue procedure to conduct a complex and
extensive evaluation.
"This robust and equitable process has left us confident that
our agreement with UPMC to deliver an electronic patient record
will offer our patients and the taxpayer the greatest
benefits."
Executives working for some of the bidders say the Royal
Berkshire competition was not only expensive but might have lost
them other contracts. Suppliers have to make choices on what
contracts to bid for, because they cannot afford the money and
people to respond to all tenders. Some of the bidders say that
competing for the Royal Berkshire's contract tied up people who
could have been working on a different bid.