By Andy Chatterton
With the amount of media exposure around the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) – the body which oversees the NHS programme, Connecting for Health (CfH) – it’s easy to believe that the NHS’ IT systems are a complete mess.
With chief executive of leading hospitals lambasting various aspects of the NPfIT, claiming that the systems currently being installed are already ‘causing heartache and hard work’, and worryingly, costing money, there is a severe lack of faith in the Programme from the very people it is meant to be helping.
CfH is designed to reform the way the NHS in England uses information, improving services and patient care. A recent House of Commons Public Account Committee report, which originally acknowledged the Programme’s aims as ambitious, has since concluded that they are bordering on the impossible. For example, the Care Records Service is four years behind schedule (now due 2014), and while the Programme started with four Local Service Providers, two have now left, with Fujitsu’s departure causing acute problems for Trusts in the South in England (my neck of the woods).
To say these IT problems are ironic is an understatement; was there ever an organisation in such dire need of even the most basic technology?
For example, a young relative of mine, recently diagnosed with a serious kidney condition, was referred by her local hospital to Great Ormond Street. Her parents waited and waited for the children’s hospital to get in touch and begin her treatment.
After two weeks with no contact, her folks contacted GOSH to find out they knew nothing about her. They were aghast to learn their local hospital sent a letter, which obviously never arrived in London. Her parents were then forced to fax over their copy of the letter to GOS to ensure that their daughter could start to receive the treatment she urgently needed.
Surely, even in local hospitals, the technology must be in place that allows doctors to communicate more effectively with each other, especially with serious cases, rather than sending a letter. With a huge percentage of the UK population having access to email, why is the NHS still relying on the Royal Mail? Haven’t they even heard of the phone?
Clearly the changes the NPfIT is bringing in are crucial and much needed, but those responsible have to get better in implementing them, there is technology out there that can help to ensure projects are completed on time and on budget, allowing managers to foresee potential problems and reacting to them before they cause delays. This is obviously being overlooked at the moment.
I mentioned the aim of the Programme above, but if those responsible are to truly improve service and the quality of patient care, they may have to go back to the basics, before setting out on more ambitious, expensive and seemingly out of control projects.
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