DH denies report that NPfIT is to be shelved

Suggestions in a weekend newspaper that the NHS is to shelve the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) have been strongly denied by the Department of Health (DH) today.

According to the News of the World, NHS chiefs have agreed to shelve the programme after admitting it was an expensive failure.

The report claims: “Hospitals have been secretly told to buy in their own systems, with money that could have gone on looking after patients.”

The article quotes an unnamed source as saying: “It doesn’t work and it’s never going to.”

The DH responded with a lengthy rebuttal. It says:“This story is wrong. Hospitals have not been told to secretly buy their own systems and the News of the World sums do not add up.

“It is absolutely untrue to say that the National Programme is costing 12% of the total NHS budget. Latest figures for the cost of the Programme show that as at 31st March 2007, £2.46 billion has been spent. The National Audit Office made clear in its report last year that the cost of the National Programme is £12.4 billion over ten years, whereas the total NHS budget in 2007 alone is £105 billion.

“There are no plans to ‘shelve’ the National Programme for IT in the NHS and far from being a failure, the NHS would fail in the future to fully function without it…

“Far from being a £12.4 billion sickener, the NHS in England has led the world in building a reliable, pervasive infrastructure which allows structured messages related to appointments, prescriptions, demographics and shortly, Summary Care Records for safer and more effective out of hours care to be transmitted throughout the NHS. To attack this programme in this way, is to politicise something which is of benefit to NHS patients and essential to a modern health service.”