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Disastrous £11.4bn NHS IT programme to be abandoned
Ministers will say the ill-fated £11.4 billion National Programme for IT, set up by Labour in 2002, is to be "urgently dismantled" following criticism that it is not value for taxpayers' money. Following an official review, the "one size fits all" project will be replaced by cheaper regional schemes allowing local health trusts and GPs to develop or buy individual computer systems to suit their needs. The Coalition's Major Projects Authority, established to review Labour's financial commitments to gauge if they provide value for money, found the scheme was not fit to provide services to the NHS, which has to make about £20bn in savings. It comes after a damning report from a cross-party committee of MPs concluded the programme had proved "beyond the capacity of the Department of Health to deliver". "Labour's IT programme let down the NHS and wasted taxpayers' money by imposing a top-down IT system on the local NHS, which didn't fit their needs," Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, will say. And in related news: NHS hospitals crippled by PFI scheme Patient care is under threat at more than 60 NHS hospitals which are "on the brink of financial collapse" because of costly private finance initiative schemes, the Health Secretary will warn. Andrew Lansley says he has been contacted by 22 health service trusts which claim their "clinical and financial stability" is being undermined by the costs of the contracts, which the Labour government used extensively to fund public sector projects. The Daily Telegraph can disclose that the trusts in jeopardy include Barts and the London, Oxford Radcliffe, North Bristol, St Helens and Knowsley, and Portsmouth. Between them the trusts run more than 60 hospitals which care for 12 million patients. Under the PFI deals, a private contractor builds a hospital or school. It owns the building for up to 35 years, and during this period the public sector must pay interest and repay the cost of construction, as well as paying the contractor to maintain the building. However, the total cost of the deals is often far more than the value of the assets. As a result, Mr Lansley says, the 22 trusts "cannot afford" to pay for their schemes, which in total are worth more than £5.4 billion, because the required payments have risen sharply in the wake of the recession. Posted by: lotp 2011-09-22 |
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