CSC government memo questioned by MP

On the eve of CSC signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government, Conservative MP Richard Bacon has written to Christine Connelly, the Department of Health's director general for informatics, raising concerns.

The MoU is expected to see 187 NHS trusts signed up to take the Lorenzo summary care records system, a figure only 35 fewer than the original £3 billion contract signed as oart of the National Programme for IT.

In his letter, Bacon warns Connelly: "There is a large disconnect between the optimistic assessment of the Department of Health as to how many trusts will actually want Lorenzo and the reality."

Bacon asks Connelly: "If you sign the Memorandum of Understanding with CSC and then it turns out that - as a result of the recent reduction in scope for Lorenzo and the well-documented difficulties in deploying it smoothly at larger trusts - hospital trusts refuse to take Lorenzo because it is not adequate for their needs, what is the financial exposure of the NHS and the Secretary of State?"

The letter follows a verbal exchange between the MP and the CIO in the House OF Commons when Connelly faced the Public Accounts Committee. While the official topic of the PAC was cancer reform strategies, Bacon quizzed Connelly on the likely CSC deal, asking her how many trusts the DoH expects will be covered by any MoU.

Connelly replied: "There's one overall exercise going on across government which is look at all IT suppliers and contracts we have. As part of that, each department that holds a significant contract with any IT supplier has been asked to look at that contract.

"The other exercise is around the National Programme where we were challenged to reduce the overall costs of the Programme. Within that, we had originally a plan that would have reduced the cost of the CSC contract by around £300 million.

"The new coalition government asked us to go further and look for savings of £500 million. The way we expect to achieve those savings are first of all to look at the functional points that are delivered by CSC in that contract and the number of trusts that they deliver to."

When Bacon pressed her for further information, Connelly said she was unable to provide an accurate answer. "I don't know off the top of my head," she said when asked how many Trusts were likely to have found an alternative to Lorenzo. "I don't know that. What I can tell you is that in the summer we went out to all the trusts through the strategic health authority and asked each trust to confirm whether they intended to take the systems offered under the CSC contract. Not all the systems are Lorenzo. We asked all of those trusts to confirm their position and they did.

"We reduced our expectation of the number of trusts we would have by about 35 as a result of that exercise," she added. "The original number of trusts in the contract - my recollection is that we have about 222 trusts covered by the CSC contract - and we would expect to reduce that by about 35."