John Humphrys "It's no secret that a massive computer system that's supposed to improve the NHS in England has been running into big problems. Now a committee of MPs has confirmed the worst fears for it. The Conservative MP Richard Bacon is a member of the Public Accounts Committee. Hugely behind schedule apart from anything else Mr Bacon?"Source: BBC Radio 4 Today 55 mins into the stream If you wish to read more details see the Public Accounts Committee report on the National Programme for IT [NPfIT] (PDF) that was published this morning.Richard Bacon "Yes i'm afraid it is and part of the problem is the way they started it. This was a project that was decided on very very quickly."
John Humphrys "About six years ago?"
Richard Bacon "Originally in February 2002, in a meeting in Downing Street, that took about half and hour and that was when the original decision was taken to let all these enormous contracts which were basicly centralized and where signed before they knew what they wanted to buy or indeed before the suppliers knew what it was they where expected to supply. Most of the subsequent problems stem from that."
John Humphrys "They have spent already, we, its our money, have spent twelve billion pounds already."
Richard Bacon "They haven't spent twelve billion pounds. Originally it was going to be two ... two point three billion, then it became six point two, then twelve point four and now twelve point seven. Not all that is spent. Two years ago it was about two billion that had been spent, and now it is about three and a half to four, although one of the problems is that the estimates of the costs of what's been spent locally are still very unreliable. The Department of Health does not really have a handle on that. We think somewhere in the region of three point six billion is going to be spent locally in total but that's not a safe figure. Also the costs at the centre are very high, probably about fifteen hundred million pound of central costs, because of these enormous contracts and the administration that goes with them, much of which is unnecessary in terms of actually delivering the clinical benefit which is mainly, if you can get the clinical benefit, not national at all but basicly local within one health community. So that you are joining up, this is the theory anyway the different parts of the NHS within one area ..."
John Humphrys "That would be a good thing to do?"
Richard Bacon "If you could do that, that's where the benefit comes from. If you could get a system that's deep, that is to say in the range of different clinical functionality that it has, and also broad, in terms of the different organisations that take part within one area in other words acute hospitals, GPs, mental health teams and even social services, if you can get that within one area you would get considerable clinical benefits including reducing adverse drug events, reducing mortality and so on, but they are miles away from that."
John Humphrys "We are almost out of time, should it be dumped, the whole thing, or can it be rescued in your view?"
Richard Bacon "I think in its present form, with these large central contracts, its not going to work, it is never going to work and it's a fantasy to think it will. It needs to be recast giving local hospital chief executives the spending power, making them the customers, and allowing them to choose the systems they want so long as they meet common standards."
