Granger: no renegotiation on Accenture deal

NHS IT director-general, Richard Granger, says there will be no renegotiation of Accenture’s contract covering the North-east and East regions of the NHS.

Granger told the Financial Times that the only grounds for renegotiation would be if the other three local service providers – CSC, Fujitsu Alliance and the BT-led Capital Care Alliance – were also suffering the same financial pain reported by Accenture, showing the price for the products was wrong. That was not the case.

He said that CSC, which – like Accenture – is using iSoft as its main subcontractor, had put in a significant number of installations “and that is not causing them financial distress.”

Granger told the FT’s public policy editor, Nicholas Timmins, that the contracts were constructed to protect the taxpayer and companies were not paid until they had provided what was agreed.

Accenture was, he said “an extremely profitable, well-resourced international corporation” with a range of projects across the public sector and had taken the risk of completing the project when it signed the contracts.

“The issues are within Accenture’s control,” he said.

As prime contractor it should put resources into iSoft to help it resolve its software problems, he said.

A spokesman for Accenture said: "We are committed to the NHS vision and to working with the NHS to overcome the challenges ahead and deliver a world-class system."

Fujitsu Alliance, LSP for the South of England, which experienced problems with its sub-contractor, IDX, and eventually replaced the firm with a new vendor, Cerner, said: "Fujitsu took prompt action last year as soon as the delays with our previous sub-contractors became evident. With support from CfH we changed supplier and this led to a small but not material write-off. Since we switched to Cerner as our principle sub-contractor the programme has been proceeding well and there are no further surplus costs to be written off."