NHS trusts not allowed to seek alternative patient record systems

Patient record systems are behind schedule

The government has brushed aside calls for acute hospital trusts to be allowed to implement alternative electronic patient record systems if the £12.7bn NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) does not make sufficient progress with its own software.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) called for NPfIT to be given a six-month deadline to make progress on the much-delayed summary care records project in a critical report published in January.

The report had warned that the programme "is not providing value for money because there have been very few successful deployments of the Millennium system and none of Lorenzo in any acute trusts".

The committee MPs said trusts could not be expected to take on the burden of deploying care record systems that do not work effectively and called on the Department of Health (DoH) to assess the financial case for allowing trusts to put forward applications for central funding for alternatives compatible with the overall programme.

But in a formal response to the PAC report this month, the DoH agreed trusts could not be expected to deploy systems that are not working effectively but made it clear "the department does not agree the six-month timetable".

Officials regretted the deployment of IT systems to support acute hospitals through the NHS Care Records Service "has taken longer than expected" but denied the programme is not providing value for money because "many elements... have been delivered and are working successfully" and the taxpayer is protected by the principle of "payment on delivery".

DoH said it remains confident Cerner's Millennium and iSOFT's Lorenzo will work effectively once development and testing have been completed and agreed that trusts will not be expected to take the software until they do work.

And the department accepted the position on deployment of care records " needs to improve appreciably" over coming months. It also admitted no decisions have yet been taken on placing contracts for the South region since the termination of Fujitsu's contract last year.