Humber still on for Lorenzo this month

Humber NHS Foundation Trust believes it remains on schedule to go-live with Lorenzo at the end of the month, following the successful completion of a “dress-rehearsal.”

The trust conducted a test for the full implementation of the electronic patient record last weekend and a spokesperson told eHealth Insider that “the dress rehearsal went well and that the trust continues to monitor progress against the plan.”

Nevertheless, board papers from April 2012, which provide a third quarterly update on Lorenzo, say that the trust has put “mitigation and contingency plans” in place.

Humber became the first mental health ‘early adopter’ of the Lorenzo system after Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust pulled out of the early adopter programme last spring.

The go-live is a key milestone for CSC, which has been trying to negotiate a new local service provider deal with the NHS for the North, Midlands and East, since Pennine’s departure.

At the moment, the company has a ‘standstill’ agreement with the Department of Health that will run out on 1 June.

According to the Humber board papers, the dress rehearsal took place a week later than scheduled, with the project running at an “amber level of risk.”

Deloitte has carried out project assurance on behalf of Humber and has measured the “level of existing risk within the project as higher than at any previous stage of the product lifecycle.”

The papers outline a go-live date of 28 May and detail the schedule for the next quarter, with tasks such as the resolving of N3 connection issues at seven of the trust’s sites to be completed.

However, the board concluded that the project continues to make “good progress” and that “this level of risk is far less than the previous early adopters.”

Company executives said last month that CSC was losing money on the NHS contract.

In February, EHI reported that it was planning to make up to 500 people working on its NHS account redundant, from a total of 1,700.

Unions held a day of action over the number of compulsory redundancies included in the programme.

CSC reported its fourth-quarter results today. These show that its fourth quarter revenue dropped to $4.11 billion in 2012 from $4.20 billion in 2011, a decline of 2.1%.

Chief executive officer, Mike Lawrie, admitted that the results were “very poor.” He cited a number of reasons for them, including problems with cost control in other devisions, but blamed “primarily NHS write-offs."

CSC’s shares are now trading at $26.25, having lost almost half of their value over the past year.