McKesson UK to be sold before New Year

McKesson’s sale of McKesson UK, including the business it acquired with System C and Liquidlogic, is due to be finalised by the end of the year.

The US company announced its intention to sell its International Operations Group business in May this year.

A senior McKesson spokesperson told EHI that the company hopes to finalise the sale of the group, which is made up of three divisions – McKesson UK, McKesson France and McKesson Netherlands – before the New Year.

The company’s picture archiving and communications business is not affected.

The company is also making structural changes to its health and social care services business, which has led to “some redundancies”.

However, the spokesperson insisted these were unrelated to the sale. “There have been plans in place for a while to make some structure changes to better respond to customers and bring them together under a single chain of command,” he said.

“As part of the restructuring some of these roles have been made redundant.”

McKesson is one of the biggest patient administration system suppliers to the NHS with its legacy Totalcare and Star PASs.

These systems are deployed at 26 trusts, many of which have used the system since the late 1980s and early 1990s.

At the moment, they are covered by a support contract negotiated by the DH when it became clear that NPfIT was running late and which runs out next year.

As a result, many of these trusts have already replaced their systems or are looking for new ones. Some have chosen to move to Medway, a modern PAS and clinical suite that McKesson acquired from System C.

EHI recently reported that two of the trusts due to deploy the system had delayed their Medway go-lives. However, the McKesson spokesperson said the sale had not affected deployments.

“People recognise that System C has a great pedigree and is doing well in terms of sales. Other parts of the business, such as Liquidlogic, are also leading suppliers, in that case in social care,” he said.

“McKesson is still very committed to the market and continue to work as business as usual with all our clients.The sale will not affect deployments.”

He added that because of the success, the company had found it necessary to hire more people to work on the deployments.

“System C is going from strength to strength. We’ve been recruiting and increasing head count within System C.”