CSC set to win ASCC child and community

The ASCC procurement for providing child and community health systems to 17 trusts in the South of England looks set to throw up a surprise result.

Unconfirmed sources suggest the winner will be CSC, bidding the TPP community system.

EHealth Insider understands that BT, bidding CSE Healthcare’s RiO system, has not been selected. Logica, bidding the Paris child health system, also appears not to have been chosen.

A deal would represent a milestone for TPP, which claims it will soon overtake INPS as the second largest supplier of primary care systems. If confirmed, it would make TPP a national rather than regional supplier.

EHI understands that the role and margin of the prime contractor in the ASCC procurement is much more limited than in the deals awarded under the National Programme for IT in the NHS.

CSC is the local service provider for the North Midlands and East of England, where it has enjoyed considerable success in primary and community systems but struggled to deliver to hospitals.

Just last week, the Department of Health confirmed it had notified CSC it was in breach of its LSP contract and that was examining all options, including termination of the £2.9 billion deal.

A win on the child and community health ASCC procurement, although small beer by comparison, might suggest that despite tough talking, the DH is not about to terminate CSC’s LSP contracts, no matter how many deadlines it has missed on putting iSoft’s Lorenzo into hospitals.

Bidders for the child and community health procurement were told earlier this week whether they have made the cut.

A DH spokesperson told EHI: “The selection process for the ASCC child and community health procurement is complete. Suppliers have been notified of their position subject to final governance procedures being completed.”

The DH spokesperson said that three other ASCC procurements are also now moving. “The ambulance and acute and integration solutions procurements will be launched shortly, with the ambulance procurement commencing first.”

The initial plenary meeting of suppliers bidding for national parts of the integration and acute services lots of ASCC was due to occur on Thursday, 17 February.

The latest information on ASCC acute is that it is now expected to cover 25 trusts and that the plan is to focus on delivering one thing well at each trust.

TPP makes child health win in North East

Earlier this week, TPP announced that County Durham and Darlington Community Health Services is to use the SystmOne child health module in North Durham.

In doing so, it is following in the footsteps of South Durham Child Health Services, which deployed SystmOne in 2008, and Easington Child Health Services, which deployed the system in 2010.

The module links to other SystmOne modules to manage child health from birth to age 19. It includes NN4B functionality, flexible scheduling and bloodspot integration.

Data migration will be performed by TPP’s in house migration team. Nick Black, head of performance and informatics at County Durham and Darlington CHS, said: “We are looking forward to completing this deployment.

"It complete the rollout of SystmOne into Child Health Services across County Durham and Darlington. Using SystmOne for all of Child Health enables the service to work in a consistent way, thereby reducing clinical risk and improving the efficiency of the team."