By Andy McCue, 1 November 2005 17:25
NEWS
The rollout of the NHS' £64m electronic 'Choose and Book' appointment booking system is a year behind schedule, the government has admitted.
The e-booking system is a key part of the £6.2bn NHS IT programme and will allow patients to choose from at least four hospitals when booking an outpatient appointment through their GP surgery.
The government had pledged to offer patients the e-booking service by 1 January 2006 but NHS chief executive Sir Nigel Crisp told MPs at a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing this week that while patients will still be able to choose which hospital they go to most appointments will have to be booked manually by GPs. Although the technology behind the system is up and running just 20,000 appointments have been made and Crisp told the PAC that rollout to GPs and primary care trusts is "running about 12 months late", according to the Financial Times.He said that large numbers of e-booking appointments are now unlikely before Decmber 2006.
The British Medical Association also told the PAC hearing about its concerns that the booking system will add too much time to consultations as GPs go through the referral options with patients.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Anon Y Mous
Am I the only one fed up with this government's total inability to manage large IT projects? Why oh why do the same companies (e.g. EDS and other large systems integrators) continue to be fed work which seems to be constantly overdue and over budget? Who in government is getting the probable backhanders from these large companies that continue to get work in spite of their obvious complete lack of ability to get it right first time, every time, on time?! Can't someone in government put a penalty clause in the contract that would prevent the failed systems integrators from pitching for gov't IT business for, say, the next 5 years after they cocked up their last gov't IT project?! How many more billions of Pounds of taxpayers money must be wasted before someone with clout stands up and shouts "Enough is enough!" Has no one in gov't got any common sense anymore?!
2. anonymous
Why only hospital appointments? If only we could book GP & practice nurse appointements on-line. So many advantages - can be done 24x7 withouty having to hang on busy surgery lines for inordinate amounts of time. Would free surgery staff for other work. And maybe we would choose another surgery if we couldn't get an appointment soon enough.
3. Iain MacKay
Does no one ever challenge these costs and timings?
Is there anything complicated about this system? I doubt it. Does it have more than a modest throughput? - surely not. Is it safety-critical? - surely not. Does it need sub-second response times? - surely not. 24x7 operation? - you must be joking. How can anyone defend even a £6m cost for it, let alone £64m, given that GPs are online anyway? Isn't there an off-the-shelf system somewhere that could meet all the essential requirements?
Why do we tolerate these ridiculous wastes of time and money - health care is actually rather important, isn't it?
4. Mick James
Actually the NHS IT programme was notable for going beyond the "usual suspects" and companies like EDS lost out to new names. Also the contracts are structured in such a way that its the integrators that are losing money, not the government. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant!
5. Simon
Anon Y Mous asked why these contracts keep going to the same big suppliers. The answer is simple, they are the only ones that will touch the projects (with or without a bargepole) !
It's a big project, with a big price tag, big penalties, and if it doesn't arrive on-time, on-budget, and work 100% from the outset then your name is plastered across the bad publicity. But can you deliver on-time, on-budget, and with 100% functionality - how many 'f's in chance ?
You might stand a chance if the deliverable is what was tendered for, but I doubt if any of these systems bear much relationship to the original requirements. They say a week is a long time in politics, now think how many ministerial changes occur during the multi-year gestation of a system - and then think how many 'new faces' will have changed the requirements in an effort to be 'seen to be doing something'.
6. Charles Smith
The Civil Service used to have good IT Personnel. Short sightedly they underpaid those skilled staff who then left to take much more highly paid jobs in Industry, Commerce and Finance.
The result is that the Civil Service no longer has a strong corps of IT practitioners nor IT skilled senior management. The may be some tiny patches of excellence, but overall the Government has to rely on external consultants.
A consequence is that there are no in-house staff with the skills and experience to specify or manage these major projects. This often results in inappropriate and expensive solutions that are nowhere near the user's requirments.
I was talking to an NHS (medical) Consultant who was bemoaning a voice recognition system for taking notes. He said that with his heavy indian accent that the system was useless, similarly for his Egyptian boss.