Computer Weekly reports that a major London hospital, Barts, could pay a very high price for problems associated with the implementation of new systems, part of the NHS programme for IT.
If I read this article correctly, Barts is forecasting an additional spend of nearly £1M for temporary staff AND an income shortfall of £3M for this year. Which makes the unexpected cost of implementation almost £4M.
Of course these are provisional sums and estimates, which might go either way. Nevertheless these are frightening, direct on-costs of a system implementation. Money that will not be available for patient care.
However, money is not the only issue at stake. When it comes to treating patients, time is generally the predominant factor. For some people, system induced inefficiencies will be vital, in every sense of the word.
So far we have heard much about the programme cost control mitigation [water-tight contracts?] but very little about the true cost of failure.
System providers might regard implementation weakness as annoying snags or glitches but to an NHS patient, these failures could be a matter of life or death.
I always thought the first rule of being in a hole was to stop digging so I genuinely hope that somebody somewhere is looking at the big picture and doing something positive to mitigate the risk of similar massive financial black-holes swallowing the NHS from within itself.
The question must be: is the Barts experience typical or atypical?
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