NEWS
nother damning report has cast doubt on the future of the National Programme for IT, suggesting the multi-billion pound, delay-ridden project has achieved little and will never pro- duce comprehensive digitised pa- tient records.
A
Doing so was a core aim of the NPfIT, sucking up £7bn of the roughly £11.4bn cost, but the National Audit Offi ce (NAO) has concluded that the £2.3bn already spent “does not represent value for money”.
The NAO does not see the situation improving, it said, and its head, Amyas Morse, stated: “This
is yet another example
of a department fundamentally underestimating the scale and complexity of a major IT-enabled change programme.
“The Department of Health needs to admit that it is now in damage- limitation mode.”
Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee, argued: “It is perfectly clear that throwing more money at the problem will not work. This turkey will never fl y and it is time the Department of Health faced reality.”
The NAO said: “The original aim
of the programme was for every patient to have an electronic care record by 2010. The systems the department contracted its sup- pliers, BT and CSC, to deliver are now not all expected to be in place until 2015-16. Even so, based on performance so far, it is unlikely that the remaining work in the North, Midlands and East, where just four of 97 systems have been delivered to acute hospital trusts in seven years, can be completed by 2016 when the contract with CSC expires. Indeed, in order to meet the revised deadline, over two systems a month would need to be delivered in this programme area over the next fi ve years.
“Progress in delivering care re- cords systems varies dramatically between regions. There has been more progress in London in some health settings, although no GP practices are now receiving a sys- tem through the programme and the number of systems in acute hospital settings has halved.”
Health Minister Simon Burns has said that the Major Projects Authority, run by the Treasury and Cabinet Offi ce, will soon begin its own evaluation of the NPfIT, with a DH decision on the future of the project due in June.
For more on this story, see page 26.
national health executive May/Jun 11 | 7
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