how did you make the decision to stay on Agresso rather than move toward the National Shared Services?
MD: It wasn’t really an option. It was one of those political things at regional health level, where somebody signed up that the whole of Kent, Surrey, Sussex were going to move over to SBS. Certain people decided that they didn’t necessarily want to do that including some people in East Kent. At one point it looked as if they were going to be forced to, but basically what happened was that the PCT in particular reviewed the decision, sat down with their staff and also with us, and decided that they would actually prefer to stay with Agresso rather than move to a national shared service type situation. They wanted to have a more local, tailorable shared service, which they felt they would have more of an input into. Obviously, because we’re a lot smaller and because we’re only covering a certain geographical area, and considering the people that work for the Consortium have all worked for the NHS for a long time; they’ve all got a sort of affinity with the East Kent NHS, I think it was
