Health minister, John Hutton, today dismissed as ‘speculation’ figures that suggest total implementation costs for the National Programme for IT could rise to £31 billion.


“There is no evidence whatsoever that that this will be the cost of implementing the National Programme for IT," he told a Radio 4 interviewer.


Pressed to say how much he thought the implementation would really cost, Hutton said the £1 billion a year currently spent by the NHS on maintaining a “hotchpotch” of 5000 separate systems should cover the costs of implementation.


Reports in all the national newspapers today suggest that the total price tag for the National Programme for IT could rise to between £18.6 billion and £31 billion over 10 years – three to five times the procurement cost of £6.2 billion.


The figures comes from an estimate drawn up by Department of Health officials and leaked to Computer Weekly. Though it has been apparent for some time that trusts would be expected to pick up considerable costs for implementation and other items not covered by NPfIT, this is the first time figures have been attached to the work.


Savings and efficiencies are expected to flow from the national programme, but the upfront investment is worrying many trusts that already have financial difficulties and a host of other targets for improvement.


E-Health Insider sought a trust-level view from Martin Bell, director of IM&T at North Bristol NHS Trust. He described the upper estimate of implementation costing five times procurement costs as “bunkum".

 

"3:1 is a reasonable ratio with on-deal and off-deal costs,” he said.

 

“The element being paid for centrally is about a quarter to a third of the total. Two thirds to three quarters will have to be found locally," he said.

 

Bell said the £1 billion currently spent on NHS systems was not available to be re-directed totally into national programme implementations as part of it covered items which were not going to be transferred to the national programme under any current plans. He reckoned about a third of current spend could be moved over to implement national programme systems.

The Department of Health said: "It is generally accepted in the IT industry that implementation costs are some 3-5 times the procurements and this is reflected in the business case that was made for the national programme.


“Whilst significant benefits will accrue from the national programme, other benefits will be seen in improvements to NHS services therefore improving patient care and safety."


James Drewer, healthcare programme manager at UK technology trade association Intellect said: "We urge the Department of Health to take steps to clarify the details of the funding arrangements as quickly as possible.


"Without such clarification it will remain unclear to what extent the NHS trusts will financially contribute towards the national programme and crucially what resources they will have left after any such commitment to concentrate on IT projects that fall outside the NPfIT core services remit."



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