Victoria suffers Cerner and iSoft delays

A large-scale Australian health IT project, using the same two key software suppliers as the NHS IT programme, is two years late, having been launched four years ago.

An independent review says the project will not be completed by the planned 2009 deadline, which had already been pushed back from an original 2007 deadline.

The project awarded contracts to Cerner for clinical software and iSoft for patient administration software, both have been subject to delay and cost overruns. No site has yet received Cerner Millennium and only one has had iSoft iPM.

The state of Victoria’s £153m (AU $320m) HealthSmart project has yet to get its chosen Cerner Millennium clinical system working at any of its sites, and has replaced obsolete hospital information systems in only one of ten planned sites.

Auditor General Des Pearson said HealthSmart was at least two years behind schedule and more than half of the budget had been spent with only 24 per cent of the planned installations complete.

Pearson said: ““HealthSmart is now nearly two years late, and the highest benefit clinical applications have yet to be delivered.”

Victoria’s Auditor General said the original budget was not realistic, and the targets were too ambitious. “The original HealthSmart budget, involving health agency co-funding capacity, was not realistic. Lack of certainty across health agencies about costs and funding sources have inevitably led to delays in implementation,” Pearson said.

His report adds project timescales were too ambitious, “Had there been more realistic estimates of the capability of the sector to implement technological change in a compressed period and a better appreciation of the poor state of information technology assets in health services, the Department of Human Services would have more effectively managed expectations around the timing of the roll-out of the strategy,” Pearson said.

HealthSmart contains a number of projects, including back office systems, but the project judged most at risk is Cerner’s Millennium clinical suite.

The £38m (AU $79m) deal with Cerner was signed in March 2006, but costs rose by £8.1m (AU $17m) to £46m (AU $96m) in 2006.

The report says: “According to the original timelines, the acute hospitals in 10 health agencies should be using clinical systems by now, but even if funding negotiations are concluded shortly, the first four agencies are unlikely to meet the June 2009 completion date."

The related project to introduce modern patient management systems have also been subject to delay.

Victorian shadow minister for health Helen Shardey said the auditor’s findings were not unexpected, but the extent of the project’s failure was a surprise.

"We have supported this kind of technology to bring our health system into the 21st century, so the massive failure is a tragedy," she said. "The project has been completely botched, and it points to a government that is just not capable of delivering on these important projects."