18 May 2011
The plan for a national IT system for the NHS is now in ‘damage limitation mode’ and cannot achieve its main aim of giving every patient an electronic health record, the National Audit Office has found.
In a report on the £11.4bn National Programme for IT, published today, the auditors conclude that even after a five-year extension, electronic records will not be in place when a major contract expires in 2016.
The report focused on the patient record part of the IT programme. It found that the scheme, which has cost £2.7bn so far, was not value for money. It also had ‘no grounds for confidence’ that the remaining planned £4.3bn of spending would be any different.
When the programme began in 2002, the intention was for every NHS patient to have an electronic care record by 2010. This was later extended to 2015/16 by the Department of Health and suppliers BT and CSC. CSC’s contract to work on the programme expires the same year.
But the report, The National Programme for IT in the NHS: an update on the delivery of detailed care records systems, found that this deadline was ‘unlikely’ to be met. In the North, Midlands and East of England, for example, just four of the 97 computer systems required had been delivered to acute hospital trusts in seven years.
Installation of the new record system is most advanced in London, but even here the NAO found that no GP practice was receiving new IT through the programme, and that the number of systems planned in acute hospitals had halved.
The DoH had also decided not to replace all hospital IT wholesale but to use existing NHS trust systems. This will cost an extra £220m to enable them to work together.
The total IT programme has cost £6.4bn so far, and the head of the National Audit Office Amyas Morse said that ‘the original vision for the National Programme for IT in the NHS will not be realised’.
He said: ‘The Department of Health needs to admit that it is now in damage limitation mode. I hope that my report today, together with the forthcoming review by the Cabinet Office and Treasury, announced by the prime minister, will help to prevent further loss of public value from future expenditure on the programme.’
