June C+B target for practices scrapped
The June target for referrals through Choose and Book has been scrapped to allow GP practices more time to earn the incentive money in the revised GMS contract. The directed enhanced service (DES) for choice and booking which began in April this year set a deadline of June 2006 when practices were expected to refer […]
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Honour for health informatics technical director
Technical director of Wirral Health Informatics Service (WHIS), Pete Marsh has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. Wirral is one of the leading trusts in the health informatics field and has pioneered developments in areas such as electronic records and e-prescribing. Marsh has been part of the workforce at Wirral Hospital […]
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Kent and Medway trusts select McKesson child health
A consortium of acute and primary care trusts across Kent and Medway strategic health authority have selected McKesson’s CarePlus child health IT system to provide a new single shared solution. McKesson’s CarePlus system will provide the NHS organisations with one integrated database, shared central procedures for child healthcare delivery and new interfaces with community-based child […]
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Bucks PCTs outsource IT support to Lynx
Ninety GP practices and 108 sites in the Buckinghamshire Primary Care division will be covered by a new three-year £600,000 contract to provide management support and services. The services, to be provided by Lynx Technology, include a helpdesk and onsite support for servers, desktops, IT hardware and network maintenance. The contract covers three primary care […]
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NAO gives positive account of NHS CfH
According to the eagerly-awaited National Audit Office report published today the DH and NHS Connecting for Health, the agency responsible for the NHS IT project, have “made substantial progress” but the project remains very much a work in progress and it is too early to judge success. The report confirms that areas of the programme […]
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Taskforce announced to speed up NCRS
The Department of Health is setting up a taskforce to speed up implementation of the NHS Care Records Service (NCRS) and will announce a start date for pilot projects for the summary record soon, GPs’ representatives heard. Health minister Lord Warner told the national local medical committees’ conference about plans to speed up delivery of […]
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Granger: bricks of the digital NHS coming together
The pace of delivery of new IT systems to the hospital sector has been "disappointing", says NHS IT director general Richard Granger NHS IT director but he says the bricks that will build a digital NHS are slowly coming together. In an interview given to E-Health Insider in the run-up to the publication of the NAO report […]
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Too many problems with C+B, says Meldrum
Too many delays and problems have undermined the Choose and Book scheme, according to the leader of the UK’s GPs. Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association’s General Practitioner Committee, told the national local medical committees’ conference that while the Choose and Book scheme “might be acceptable in principle” it had been the […]
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Patientline blames losses on ward closures
Patientline has announced yearly losses of £24.7m before tax, which the company has blamed on ward closures and the recent Ofcom investigation into its charging structure. Geoff White, the recently-appointed chairman of Patientline, said: "The group has been through a very challenging period, involving not only difficult trading conditions but also an investigation by Ofcom […]
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Hewitt urged to block software switch in London
Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, has been asked to block the possible move by BT to replace its software supplier for electronic patient records in London as part of the NHS National programme for IT (NPfIT). Richard Bacon, MP, a senior member of the House of Commons Public accounts committee (PAC), last night wrote to […]
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