By Dan Ilett, 10 January 2006 15:45
NEWS
Doctors are becoming increasingly sceptical of the £6.2bn NHS IT programme as plans to create a national database of patient records move forward.
A study found that although many doctors said the programme could provide clinical care benefits to the NHS, more said they were worried about how the project was being implemented.
The research, conducted by Medix, an online resource for doctors, found whereas three years ago 47 per cent of doctors thought the programme was a good use of NHS resources (27 per cent thought not), this year only 17 per cent were in favour of it and 57 per cent against it. Only one per cent of respondents said it was a good or excellent programme.
Robin Guenier, chairman of Medix, told silicon.com: "When we started doing this survey, they [doctors] were quite enthusiastic. Now that's almost all gone but it's difficult to say why. I can guess that the biggest single complaint is that doctors haven't been consulted.
"If the government wants this to succeed, a major priority for the NHS is to look at what they do and consult the doctors."
The survey found that consultation between managers and doctors about the project had only improved slightly in three years - today five per cent said they felt they had adequate consultation compared with two per cent in 2003.
Of the 1,300 doctors surveyed, those who had heard of the changes ahead said they were "seriously concerned" about confidentiality.
Seventy-one per cent of GPs and 46 per cent of other doctors said patient records would be less secure once the programme comes into effect.
One doctor wrote in his response: "Huge waste of money and confidentiality likely to be seriously compromised. Does choice agenda extend to patients having right to not have their confidentiality breached? NHS email cumbersome. The biggest government IT disaster yet?"
Another added: "I am extremely concerned about the prospect of all patients' medical records being available on a national database without their explicit consent."
Few doctors actually knew anything about the programme services affecting them and many were confused over when they should start recording patient clinical details for the Care Records Service.
But others were more positive about the scheme. One GP wrote: "I believe that a common electronic record, with better security, will aid patient care across the country.
"The other schemes seem to me to be a waste of valuable resources with the possible exception of digital radiography."
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. Charles Smith
A lot of GP's and hospital Docs are resistant to change. They are quite happy to live in the old inefficient manual ways. You only have to attend a hospital appointment to see the chaos of paper and inefficient use of staff. Where they do have computer systems - the coding systems are incompatible.
The whole area cries out for a centralised system
2. anonymous
A friend is working on this project and has warned me that it is fraught with risk.
1: The whole project has been poorly sold internally to the NHS. They see a reduction in local decision making and authority so locally are determined to be antagonistic to the project.
2:The NHS has set very extreme performance targets for the regional suppliers but has not put the people in place to implement the system.
3:The suppliers have had to invest multi-millions to bid, win and implement the systems and are waiting on the NHS. It will be some time before they see any return on this investment.
In conclusion it's an ambitious project but does require a "hearts and minds" approach to remove this deep scepticism.
3. Alistair Thomas
Projects that work keep the stakeholders informed. I would guess that the Doctors are not just stakeholders but the major user group.
Obviously with such a large user group, you can't 'consult' with most of them but they should have a representative group on the functional analysis/design team. Key decisions should be desimeninated and some sort of online forum established to encourage debate and share ideas and fears.
This will need to be protyped and proved in an innotive and joined-up way. Maybe the sample group for the survey are removed from the project and are miffed at being excluded.
Whatever the truth of this, if the final result relies on all doctors understanding and using the system then clearly they are already miles off track and this doesn't bode well at all.
Please tell me that there are some clear delivery points before the £6.2B is spent and someone does a review and declares it all wasted. Presumably you have to get all doctors capturing records in the same way? A clear chance to engage all doctors before the thorny issue of sharing the data becomes an issue.
Anybody representing the patients (aka the tax payer)? Where's our forum? Where's our communication of the need/benefits?
Whose responsible for this? Is their career and pension on the line? Clear responsibility, clear accountability and transparent and regular review?
4. In Awe of Gov't and SI's Stupidity
I will gladly cock-up these gov't IT projects for a lot less pay than those 'chiefs' of the IT industry's systems integrators like EDS, BT Syntegra, IBM/Accenture, ad nauseum.
How DO those clowns continually get awarded these lucrative contracts from our idiotic gov't?!
And how DO those idiots GET their jobs? I'll do their job for half of what they get paid in salary. Where do I apply?