Health minister John Hutton was interviewed on Radio 4’s
Today programme last week about this publication’s revelation that
the final cost of the NHS IT programme could be more than
£18.6bn.
Interviewer Ed Stourton asked about the accuracy of Computer
Weekly’s figures. The minister replied, "I think you should just
realise that this story is essentially largely speculation. We have
made very substantial amounts of resources available to the NHS to
support the national programme for IT, which is going to improve
patient safety, quality and the overall patient experience of using
the NHS.
"Currently, trusts spend about £1bn a year operating their
existing IT systems and of course once the national programme
starts to come through in the NHS, that is a resource that will be
able to support the implementation of the national programme.
"So I think really all that has happened today is that someone
has speculated about what they think the overall costs might be. We
are not going to ask the NHS to carry an unsustainable financial
burden. We are not stupid."
Stourton wanted the minister to be more specific. "We are agreed
that the original figure set aside for procurement [of the national
plan] was £6.2bn?" he asked.
"Yes," replied Hutton, "over 10 years."
"And is [Computer Weekly] right when it said that the figure for
implementation, for actually putting the stuff in and getting it
working locally, could be three to five times the £6.2bn?"
Hutton replied, "That is the figure that people are chucking
around. There is no evidence whatsoever that that will actually be
the costs of implementing the national programme for IT. It is one
of the figures that is often used. As I say, we currently spend
£1bn a year..."
Stourton, "But you must have some idea, just forgive me, but
just on that figure, you must have some idea how much this is going
to cost to implement?"
Hutton, "Well yes, we spend £1bn a year on implementing our
existing IT systems."
Stourton, "Yes, but how much is the new system going to cost to
implement?"
Hutton, "Well we haven’t ..."
Stourton, "You should have an answer to that shouldn’t you?"
Hutton, "Yes, and we think it is going to cost the same as we
are currently spending, £1bn a year that NHS trusts currently spend
on operating 5,000 separate IT systems across the NHS. We will have
one integrated, coherent IT system that will apply in all parts of
the NHS; and we think that will give the NHS, NHS trusts and
primary care trusts the resource they need to implement the
programme sensibly and successfully."
Stourton, "To be absolutely clear about the £6.2bn, that remains
the amount it costs to procure this?"
Hutton, "Yes it does."
Stourton, "And you reject any suggestion that the cost of
implementing it is going to be as high as these figures in Computer
Weekly suggest?"
Hutton, "Well we certainly do. Look, I mean it would be insane
to say to the NHS: ‘Look here is £15bn worth of additional costs
for you to bear that we have not budgeted for.’ We do not behave
like that and the NHS cannot be funded like that. It spends a very
significant amount of money implementing a whole variety of
different IT systems, many of them that cannot actually speak to
each other.
"That is why we are introducing the national programme for IT
and we are very confident that the £1bn a year we are currently
spending in revenue on operating this variety of hotchpotch systems
can be used successfully in the future to implement the national
programme for IT."
Stourton, "It seems remarkable that what is paying for a system
as it works at the moment will cover what is the cost of
implementing a very new and sophisticated system."
Hutton, "Well, I am not so sure that is true when you think that
we have actually got a network of 5,000 local independent systems
that are not properly integrated, which means that actually one
hospital quite frequently cannot speak to another.
"The whole benefit and purpose of the national programme will be
that it will introduce this integration right across the service.
We are the most integrated healthcare system in the world, but we
have got currently the least functional IT system to support the
work we do."
To hear the full interview, go to the audio archive for 12
October atListen
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