BUSINESSBritish electronic network cause of U.S. vendor's lossesAccenture says it will lose $450 million on contracts to design and implement a health care computer system for Britain's National Health Service.By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. April 17, 2006. The effort to build an electronic health network in Great Britain -- a system linking doctors and hospitals, which the United States also is planning -- has received another blow thanks to a recent financial report from one of the project's U.S. vendors. Accenture Ltd. announced March 28 it was posting a $450 million charge against quarterly earnings for losses it expects to incur on two contracts to build part of the national health network Britain is implementing. Profits for the quarter ended Feb. 28 were $69.7 million, down from $209.8 million for the same period a year earlier. Revenues were $4.5 billion compared to $4.2 billion a year ago. In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Accenture, one of the world's largest technology outsourcing services companies, partly blamed its drop in earning on Manchester, England-based ISoft Group PLC's failure to develop and deliver on time health care software solutions. ISoft is part of the consortium formed by Accenture that in 2003 won contracts worth $3.5 billion from NHS Connecting for Health. As part of the National Health Service's $11 billion initiative to implement a national health network for Great Britain, the agency carved up the country into five regions. Accenture won contracts covering two regions, while consortia led by Computer Sciences Corp., BT Group and Fujitsu Ltd. received contracts valued at $7.5 billion covering the remaining three. Under the contracts, vendors aren't paid unless they deliver systems that work. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2006 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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