Commenting on the public accounts committee report on the National Programme for IT in the NHS, South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon, a member of the committee and long-standing critic of the Programme, said today: “Ministers need to take their heads out of the sand. In its current form, the Programme is in deep trouble from which it is unlikely to recover. ”
Click play to hear Richard discuss the £12.5bn NHS computer scheme on the BBC Today programme

“The Programme’s central aim was to create detailed electronic patient records but this is now so far behind schedule that hospitals are walking away.”;

“Hospital trusts should now be free to buy the systems they want, subject to common standards, and they should be funded to do this through the national Programme, which has failed to supply what hospitals want”.

“Most of the other parts of the Programme, even if useful, are either peripheral to its main purpose or quite unremarkable, such as the N3 broadband network.  No one is going to be impressed that the NHS has discovered broadband”.

“Trusts are refusing to take systems offered by the Programme because they are not fit for purpose.  The insane thing is that for non-Foundation hospitals the NHS is obliged to make payments to suppliers anyway, even when hospital Trusts do not want what is on offer because it doesn’t work”.

“The patience of NHS staff is not limitless and Trusts have already started voting with their feet.  It is time to allow Trusts to do what they should have been encouraged to do from the outset, which is to buy the software they want, leaving the centre to set common standards”.