Tony Blair repeatedly sought to shorten the timetable
for theNHS IT programmein a move that would
have brought results for patients in time for a general election in
2005, Computer Weekly has learned.
Papers obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that
the Department of Health drastically underestimated the time it
would take to make electronic patient records available online.
In
papers presented to an NHS IT meeting at Downing Street, the
Department of Health promised systems would provide "seamless" care
across the NHS by 2004/05 - less than half of the time now allotted
to the scheme. The meeting, on 18 February 2002, was attended by IT
suppliers, policy advisers and health experts.
But Tony Blair made it clear that he regarded even the 2004/05
timescale as too long. He asked repeatedly for it to be shortened,
which would have brought visible benefits in time for a general
election in May 2005.
Blair told the meeting that implementing the programme faster
than planned would underpin the government's reform agenda and
provide evidence of NHS modernisation to the public.
But the timetable in the Department of Health papers has proved
hopelessly optimistic. Access by patients and doctors to national
summary care records are only at a trial stage. And contracts for
the delivery and implementation of new national systems run until
2013 - eight years later than the timetable presented to Downing
Street.
The Department of Health awarded a series of contracts in record
time under the NHS's National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in 2003, but
some suppliers complained they were being given too little time to
consider their proposals.
The main part of the programme - a national electronic health
record - is running three years behind the original timetable, in
part because the idea is more difficult than first thought to put
into practice.
The papers raise questions about whether the timetable for the
NPfIT was geared towards a general election, rather than the
practicalities and complexities of the scheme - and whether the
Department of Health put politics before realities in promising the
programme in less than three years.
Paul Cundy, GP IT spokesman for the British Medical Association,
said it appeared that the Department of Health had been "wildly,
even delusionally, optimistic about the timetable for the NPfIT in
order to secure funding".
Vince Cable, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the
Downing Street papers showed that the NPfIT was launched after a
discussion that stood out for its "amateurism, naivety and a lack
of consideration of the practicalities".
More on the Downing Street papers >>