NHS hospital trusts are increasingly reluctant to
install patient administration systems that support crucial parts
of the £12.4bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT), the official in
charge of the scheme has admitted.
Richard Granger, chief executive of Connecting for Health, which
runs NPfIT, told the Financial Times newspaper that many
hospitals would need a new patient administration system (PAS) to
support the electronic care record that is a core component of
NPfIT.
But because trusts were unhappy with the PAS software and
hampered by straitened finances, just 19 of the 43 PAS systems
planned for this month had been installed, he said. Contractor BT
was having difficulty finding London hospitals willing to install a
new PAS next year.
The news comes as the Commons Health Select Committee announced
that it would hold an inquiry into NPfIT. NHS chief executive David
Nicholson is also undertaking a review of Connecting for
Health.
Granger told the FT that a PAS from Cerner offered clinical
benefits but did not easily provide reports in the format trusts
needed to bill their commissioners, while a product from troubled
supplier iSoft could produce the reports but offered few clinical
gains.
He said neither PAS did “everything that people want”, adding,
“It is not a great time to ask people to take new computer systems.
Money is tight, targets are tight, these systems are disruptive and
there is not an enormous amount of benefit to trusts at the
moment.”
He admitted that NHS trust chief executives were “acting very
rationally” in delaying PAS installations.
Granger said there would be “subtractions and additions” to the
NPfIT timetable.
“I don't think it is going to get easier. It will continue to be
a difficult task,” he said.
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