Health care records service delayed

The National Audit Office has published a report on the progress of the Care Records Service that underpins the Connecting for Health programme, which found the software development on the Lorenzo database and associated applications that supports the Care Records Service in the North, Midlands and East regions of the country will be delivered four years late.

IT for the three regions of the programme is run by CSC, who will incur a late-delivery penalty as a result.

According to a spokeswoman for the NAO, patient care will not be affected, as the regions' health authorities have their own records systems up and running and will have to use an interim application until Lorenzo is completed. There is no extra cost as a result of late delivery because a fixed price for the programme has already been established and payment will only be made to the developers on delivery.

Tim Burr, head of the National Audit Office, said in a statement: "The scale of the challenge involved in delivering the National Programme for IT has proved to be far greater than envisaged at the start, with serious delays in delivering the new care records systems.

"Progress is being made, however, and financial savings and other benefits are beginning to emerge. The priority now is to finish developing and deploying care records systems that will help NHS Trusts to achieve the programme's intended benefits of improved services and better patient care."

The estimated cost for the whole Connecting for Health programme is £12.7bn. The NAO said due to the delay in deployments, actual expenditure to date of around £3.6bn at the end of March has been much lower than expected. The NHS and suppliers are working together now to establish revised timelines for deployment of the IT systems.