The Department of Health has given MPs on the Public Accounts
Committee an assurance that problems following a
troubled go-live of nationally-bought systems at an Oxfordshire
hospital will not be repeated elsewhere in the NHS.
However, evidence has emerged that some of the same problems
experienced at Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre have already occurred at
Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which went live with the same
version of the Cerner Millennium Care Records Service as
Nuffield
Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre lost its status as a top-performing
hospital following problems which included an inability to report
some of its management activity and progress towards meeting
waiting list and other targets.
Last week the
Public Accounts Committee published a report that was highly
critical of the NHS's £12.4bn
National Programme for IT (NPfIT). In the report, MPs attacked
the credibility of some of the Department of Health's assurances
over the progress of aspects of the programme.
As part of the committee's research, one of its members,
Richard Bacon, asked the Department of Health whether any of the
problems encountered by the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre were
expected to occur at
future Cerner deployments.
The department's response, revealed in the committee's report,
was: "No. We will support the local NHS and ensure that problems
are not repeated."
But Computer Weekly has received evidence that Buckinghamshire
Hospitals NHS Trust - which went live with the
NPfIT Care Records Service more than six months after
Nuffield's deployment - also ran into difficulties with
reporting.
Anne Eden, chief executive of Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS
Trust, said in a letter to Computer Weekly that reporting was an
issue.
She said, "All trusts need to provide reports on areas such as
inpatient, outpatient, day-case activity, etc to our funding
primary care trust. In addition, we can use this information to
monitor and learn from our own performance." She added that there
were "some difficulties in completing some aspects of
reporting".
This evidence raises questions about the assurances given by the
Department of Health.
The Care Records Service is the main part of the NPfIT. The aim
is to give 50 million people in England a medical record that can
be made available to any authorised clinician.
'Stop this care records system roll-out', urge doctors
>>
Public Accounts Committee report >>
Criticism and opportunity for NHS IT >>
Aganst the
current: Tony Collins' project management blog >>
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