The body in charge of the £6.2bn NHS IT project has called for "key
personnel changes" at Accenture after the outsourcing company announced a $450m (£260m) loss on its health service contracts due to delays in hitting delivery deadlines.Accenture said in its second-quarter financial results this week it expects to take a $450m hit on its NHS IT contracts over the next three to four years. Accenture is the prime contractor for the North East and Eastern regions in two contracts originally estimated to be worth around £2bn over 10 years.
The company largely pointed the finger of blame at subcontractor iSoft for failing to deliver the clinical IT software on time — but also cited higher than expected development and integration costs and lower demand for iSoft's GP software after the government said local practices could choose alternative products if they wanted to.
iSoft, whose shares plummeted on the announcement, declined to comment but the government's NHS IT body Connecting for Health (CfH) warned that the blame for any delays lies squarely with Accenture.
A CfH statement said: "Under the contracts, the prime contractor has a clearly defined responsibility to manage its delivery obligations... suppliers do not get paid until they deliver. We believe that the issues are within Accenture's control and have requested key personnel changes within the Accenture organisation."
CfH also said that CSC, the prime contractor for NHS IT systems in the North West and the West Midlands, has already developed a plan for the delivery of iSoft software.
"We are awaiting a similar resourced plan from Accenture," CfH added.
Accenture's chief executive, William Green, said in a statement: "We have established guiding principles for success for our ongoing work with the NHS and have devoted additional management resources at the highest level to resolve the NHS matter as quickly as possible."
Accenture had also warned of losses on the NHS IT contracts last year after delays in hitting delivery deadlines set by CfH.
Talkback
How much longer are jokers like Accenture, CSC and EDS going to make major blunders on large scale IT implementations but still pick up new business? Obviously their size excludes most consultancies from the running in tendering for large projects but there msut be someone who can do it right!
Accenture should be out of there. It can't keep up with modern systems, being too MS-oriented. Like EDS and PeopleSoft the core competencies seem to be sales and placation for subsequent cost overruns and failure to deliver.
Along those lines, why is NHS even fiddling with iSoft? One would think that it would be faster and cheaper to base something off of Vista :
http://www.hardhats.org/
Oliva,
Come on get serious....Vista!
Accenture has major problems in that it doesn't have delivery people it relies on Avenard for that altyhough it trys to keep design in house! isoft is just not up to the job!
The ones who could do it right !? Probably those , like IBM, who decided to pull out of the running when they saw the complexity, constraints etc. They are the smart ones