The
Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust is preparing for a possible
compensation claim after a troubled go-live under the £12.7bn
National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
The trust's staff have been struggling to cope with bugs and
downtime since the go-live of the "Millennium" system from US
supplier Cerner in June.
The trust was the first in London to go live with Release "LC1"
of the
Millennium Care Records Service. One of the government's
purposes in launching the scheme is to give 50 million patients in
England an electronic health record.
But go-lives have led to operating theatres and clinics being
unused, while backlogs of work have built up because bookings have
not been scheduled correctly. Some hospitals have lost income
because they are paid on how many patients they treat and for what.
Appointments have been delayed or lost for months. Several trusts
have referred to implementations raising "clinical risks".
The Royal Free's board of directors was told in August, "Some
individual clinics have genuinely struggled to manage the
implementation of Cerner. In the main these clinics tend to be
those with the largest "volume of patients"
Officials at NHS Connecting for Health, which is part of the
Department of Health, say that the difficulties at the Royal Free
and at other trusts where NPfIT systems have gone live are
"teething problems".
Although the system at the Royal Free is said to be improving
gradually, staff have complained of weeks of chaos. Appointments
are said to have been lost in the system and one clinician has said
he spent more time booking appointments than in his clinic treating
patients.
Now the trust's board has considered a possible claim for
compensation. It was reported to the trust's board on 28 August
2008 that "the trust is continuing to log all the problems which
had been encountered to be used in the event that a claim proves
possible".
The board was also told that another trust was "known to be
seeking compensation and it would be interesting to see what the
outcome of the claim would be".
But NHS trusts cannot claim compensation directly from their
local service providers because they have no contract with them. In
London the contract is between the Secretary of State for Health
and BT, the capital's local service provider. Trusts could make a
claim for compensation to the Secretary of State.
A spokesman for NHS Connecting for Health was unaware of any
claims as yet for compensation. He said, "There are no trusts
seeking compensation in relation to the NPfIT."
He added, "NHS CFH and London hospital Trusts are enthusiastic
and committed to the timely programme of go-lives of the Cerner
Millenium system, given the beneficial effect to patients and
healthcare staff."
A spokesman for BT said that no London trust is seeking
compensation. Asked if it was a good idea continuing with go-lives
of the Cerner system given the effect on trusts and patients of the
go-lives, the spokesman said, "The system is already bringing
benefits to patients, so we have no plans to change our deployment
strategy. That is not to say there have not been issues we have
made no secret of that, but it would be unusual for this not to be
the case with what is essentially a massive change management
programme."
The Royal Free treats about 700,000 people a year, employs about
4,600 people and has a turnover of about £450m.
See also:
"London Trust may claim after NPfIT problems" on Tony Collins' blog
- includes Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust board paper - August
2008