Quick recovery plan for health PFI deals

IT healthcare contracts under the Government's Private Finance Initiative (PFI) are to be speeded up following last week's major shake-up of public sector contracts by the Labour Government.

The Queen's speech outlined that new legislation will be introduced giving NHS Trusts the power to sign contracts with developers to finance and implement IT in hospitals. This new bill will make PFI procurement processes less time-consuming, and permit the Treasury and the Department of Health to give them a speedy approval.

At present, NHS Trusts have to forward an application, which is approved by the NHS Executive, set out to tender and then finally passed by the Treasury - a process which can take from two to four years.

John Badham, assistant chief executive at Warrington Hospital, said: "Our application to introduce an Integrated Patient Management System (IPMS) took two years (Data General won the contract for #4.6m in April 1997). The whole process takes an incredibly long time. This new bill will remove the obstacles, and strip out all the bureaucracy that existed before."

As a result, new health minister Alan Milburn hopes to push through legislation that will allow NHS Trusts to sign PFI deals immediately. One of these is believed to be Crawley and Horsham NHS Trust, which put out a tender in 1993 and has yet to receive approval.

The move follows recent criticism of the way PFI deals are handled by the Government. An outpouring of collective discontent was voiced at Healthcare Computing 97 in Harrogate in March. David Steeds, chief executive of the Private Finance Panel, an advocate of the initiative, conceded that PFI has created problems in the NHS.