NHS national database - FAIL

[EdithWeston]

Or so says the BBC News this morning. It's saying the NAO has reported that it's cost £2.7b, but can never work as envisaged and has "achieved precious little for patients", is poor VFM and is still set to cost a further £4b -ish. (It seems locals schemes offer better value and utility).

Earlier threads about this database and opting out here and here and here.

A news article with more info on this.

And the NAO report itself.

Yep one of the biggest wastes of money New Labour ever decided to "invest" in. It's been a disastrous project from start to well I'd say finish but its not finished!

When the doctors don't want it, the patients see no benefits and even IT companies decline to bid for it (We see these as gravy train projects). You'd think any sane person would think "hmmm, perhaps this is not such a good idea". But nope....

My DH has worked in the past on this project.

He would come home every night raging at what a waste of time it was.

How the scope was constantly changed, even while work was being released.
How the Primary Care Trusts all had their own agendas, which were fundamentally different to each other.
How there were some really major issues with offshoring.
How no-one was actually in charge of the thing.

He has worked on some pretty fucked up projects in the past, that's what he does best - going in and sorting them out - but he says this one is a different beast altogether.

it makes me laugh when people/governments/companies think that IT can do everything and forget tha you still need to pay for the man-power and hours of inputting data when so many older systems are incompatible.

They've not dumped it because it wasn't a good idea nor because people didn't want it but because they are idiots who thought it would be an easy thing to do.

niceguy2 your 'surely any sane person...' comment made me guffaw - you're insinuating there's some level of sanity in government!

Why on earth wouldn't we be happy with them frittering away ridiculous amounts on equally ridiculous systems spending oney on this when the alternative is something as mundane as patient care?

*money.

All adding weight to the argument that the PCTs and civil servants are not fit to run as complex and important an organisation as the NHS, and that more involvement from private companies with good track records for competent management in the field of health provision is a good rather than a bad idea.....

The problem really was more to do with sending sections of it out to different private companies and nobody being in charge as such, so they were not compatible - no-one thinking of bigger picture. It doesn't add to the argument that private companies would improve the NHS in any way, I think it detracts from it as it as there is no sense of the different components working together.

I know it is a much smaller population, but in Scotland the NHS hired people directly to write the computerised records and they are up and running fine, and proportionally cheaper. I find them extremely useful as I have different consultants and it cuts down on them having to try and track each other down, if I have blood tests done at hospital they are added to my general file and I can miss the routine bloods at the GP practice that month (freeing it up for someone else). Tomorrow I have to have an ultrasound and an MRI at different hospitals, but it can be in the same day as they will upload the results to my records. A few years ago I used to have to wait for letter written correspondence between my GP and consultants (and god help me if a problem covered two specialities). This efficiency has really helped me manage a chronic illness, I take up a lot less Dr time and the doctor spends less time on paperwork. This has improved patient care for me, and now there won't be another setting up period, I can't see a down side. It is the fact it has been done badly that is the problem, not the concept.

My favourite part is the wee counter at the side of the computer that measures my heart disease/ type 2 diabetes risk based on all my blood pressure readings, weight, medications etc. - I really think that will help doctors spot a reading out of the ordinary and identify at risk patients, but we won't know that for a long time.

CES iI see it differently. Like Runner says, it seems to have been all the different bodies who all wanted to do things their way that were the problem. Look forward to a lot more of this sort of thing if the government get the changes they want to push through.

Will it though? Aren't the reforms about pushing things downwards and making them more local?

Is this about SystmOne and systems like that?

Because speaking as a clinician here, in our trust it's been amazing. Best innovation I've ever encountered.. we can do/share reports, share notes, it reduces LOADS of work/reduplication. Much better than paperbased record keeping. I don't know why there's so much negativity.

It isn't: it's the electronic patient records under NPfIT - not initiatives within specific trusts (which are noted as being far more fit for purpose).

Actually SystmOne is available under NPfIT and forms part of the report mentioned. It is also available via other contracts.

We have a national database here as well and althoug it has its flaws - like any database - it is a zillion times better than paper records.

Trouble is when people say 'The NHS' what they fail to realise is that it is not one homogenous 'company' like a big multinational. It is in fact lots of little local companies all doing different things and with different funding streams. It would be like a huge consortia of small businesses all trying to collectively design a database to share.

The waste of money is indicative of the problem we have with constant short-term funding of the NHS by the government. There are no medium-term plans and no consistency on which to build.

Private business entering the market place will not change those fundamental problems and in fact will exacerbate them.