07.12.18
Major IT supplier agrees to pay NHS millions of pounds over service failures
A multimillion-pound settlement deal has been reached between NHS Digital and EMIS Group after the private IT supplier admitted to providing misleading information about the quality of its service.
In a market announcement, EMIS Group confirmed it had reached an agreement with NHS Digital over its failures to meet service levels and reporting obligations as part of a GP contract.
The issues were first announced in January and, in March this year, the company set aside a £11.2m provision. It is unclear whether the final settlement actually reached £11.2m, but EMIS did say that it was “within” this amount.
EMIS is England’s largest supplier of GP IT and holds over 40 million patient records in its health products and systems, which are used by 100,000 professionals in nearly 6,000 healthcare organisations.
In January this year, the IT company announced it had identified that there has been a failure to meet certain service levels and reporting obligations with NHS Digital, relating to the group’s EMIS Web product for GPs in England.
EMIS is required by contract to file monthly reports with NHS Digital on the quality of its services, system availability, and performance, but the company said it had not met the service levels required in three areas of its contract.
Earlier this year, NHS Wales announced it would not be choosing EMIS as its preferred vendor for its primary care framework agreement.
Image credit - sturti