Latest NPfIT delays merit a review

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Conservative and Liberal Democrat shadow health ministers have called for an urgent review of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) after NHS trusts in London said they would not be going live with the care records system until some time in 2009.

Stephen O'Brien, the conservatives' health spokesman said the "hugely expensive" scheme was "desperately behind schedule". Yet ministers "refuse to be accountable for it", he said, repeatedly declining to answer detailed questions on the grounds of commercial confidentiality.

"It is extremely difficult to work out from the outside what is going on. If the centralised, top-down approach to introducing the patient record had worked we wouldn't be where we are now," he said.

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats' health spokesman said it was definitely a time for a "radical rethink". What was needed was "a thorough review of the work in progress and how to proceed".

The National Audit Office said earlier this year plans for the full implementation of the electronic record were running four years late. However, five months on, the published plan from Connecting for Health, the agency that oversees the NPfIT, has no deployments listed for the patient administration systems that underpin the electronic record to go into any big acute hospital by the end of this year.

A much-delayed deployment of the patient record software in the North, due in June, has still not been achieved and only one big acute hospital has turned on a version of the new system since May.