NHS IT faces fresh scrutiny

The National Programme for NHS IT (NPfIT) is continuing to attract criticism for a lack of clinical involvement.

Professor Peter Hutton, NPfIT chief medical adviser until 2004, told the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week that the contracts signed in 2003 did not buy what doctors wanted.

‘It was like being in a juggernaut on the M1 – it didn’t matter where we went as long as we arrived on time,’ said Hutton.

But representatives from the NHS and Connecting for Health (CfH), the organisation responsible for implementing the programme, denied Hutton’s claim.

Sir Ian Carruthers, acting NHS chief executive, said he had never known the health service go to such lengths to consult its staff before.

And CfH director general Richard Granger said hundreds of people had been involved.

‘A project this size will cause a degree of controversy, but there was massive input into the original design documents and on an ongoing basis,’ he said.

The PAC hearing follows the publication of a National Audit Office (NAO) report earlier this month (Computing, 22 June).

PAC chairman Edward Leigh emphasised the two-year delay to the national electronic patient record system at the heart of the programme. Of 170 acute hospitals, none is yet able to access national electronic records, he said.

But NAO head Sir John Bourn is confident the programme will deliver its core objectives. ‘Difficult challenges remain and I recognise it isn’t easy, but I still think it can be done,’ he said.

MPs questioned the report’s broadly positive tone, in the light of its release a year later than expected and rumours of struggles between the NAO and the Department of Health over its contents. Bourn said the report took time be cause of the complexity of the subject.

Summing up, Leigh said the programme is ambitious, with some positive elements but with systems not yet fully working on the ground. He requested further NAO investigation, to be discussed again by the committee.

The NAO report concluded overall costs of the programme are likely to be £12.4bn, and that continued buy-in from staff will be crucial to its success.

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