White, who will take up his post in 2007, is currently chief executive of Barts and The London NHS Trust, which runs major teaching hospitals in the UK capital including The Royal London, St Bartholomew’s and The London Chest Hospital. Clive Fenton, who is currently in charge of BT’s work on the NHS project, will report to White as COO.
BT is responsible for the London ‘cluster’ of the troubled Connecting for Health project. Last month, it was revealed that the company had been paid just 1.3m pounds ($2.4m) for the first two years of work on the deal, far less than any of the other lead contractors involved in CfH. However, BT has since stated that it expects to make a profit on the 10-year contract.
BT is also believed to be interested in taking over the running of the North East and Eastern regional cluster should current manager Accenture decide to walk away from the deal. Late last week, it emerged that Accenture was willing to take legal action to extricate itself from the CFH program, which has already cost it approximately $450m.
