Plans for key new systems to go live in the south of
England under the NHS’s National Programme for IT (NPfIT) have been
put back so that lessons can be learned from a troubled roll-out at
Oxford’s Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.
Public spending watchdog the National Audit Office had sent a
team to Nuffield to learn the lessons from the go-live in December
2005, which caused months of significant disruption. But a 60-page
National Audit Office report on the NPfIT made no mention of the
problems or the lessons learned.
The delays in the South were revealed in a circular from the
Royal United Hospital NHS Trust Bath. It said that the changes made
after the Nuffield experience had “affected all subsequent go live
dates”.
Nuffield went live with the first implementation in the South by
main supplier Fujitsu of a basic version of the NPfIT Care Records
Service.
But the difficulties led to postponed operations, patients
turning up for clinics with no records of their appointments and
patients not being sent appointments.
The trust has also been unable for several months to produce
reports on its performance. In May it reported having breached
national targets for treating patients.
Jan Fowler, director of nursing and operations, said in May that
the trust had four months of difficulty in producing activity
reports and until recently had been unable to produce information
that identified patients who needed to be brought forward for
treatment within national targets.
She said the trust was writing to all patients who had
“unfortunately waited longer than the national standard, to
apologise for their delays”.
Lessons learned include extending testing times, and modifying
the software from US company Cerner.
The National Audit Office’s report on the NPfIT was generally
positive, but it did not comment on the overall feasibility of the
programme and had material omissions.
NHS IT costs scrutinised in the House of
Commons
The costs of the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) were
discussed at a House of Commons Public Accounts Committee hearing
yesterday (26 June) and will be raised again in one of the opening
topics at Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow.
MP Richard Bacon, a member of the Public Accounts Committee,
will ask Tony Blair how much has been spent on the NPfIT. It is not
known whether Blair will disclose the money spent on the central
contracts or the entire programme so far.