Trusts pay to end NPfIT staff supply contracts in red tape chaos
National Health Service trusts are having to buy themselves out of a commitment to supply staff to companies building the NPfIT electronic patient record system. Trusts in the south are paying Fujitsu £19m after the service found it could not provide 50 NHS employees to help with the programme.
And a similar obligation to supply staff in the north-west and West Midlands to CSC, the contractor for the region, has also been "re-moved" after it was found staff could not be spared from their clinical and other commitments.
The payments were disclosed yesterday by Computer Weekly and Richard Bacon, the Conservative MP, who established their scale through a parliamentary question.
Under the deal with CSC, the service agreed to provide 50 staff worth £6.9m a year over the 10-year life of the contract to help reduce costs, with CSC then able to charge the equivalent cost to the NHS if the service could not provide them.
Yesterday CSC said it had been agreed to "remove this obligation", with staff being provided on a voluntary basis. But the company declined to spell out the financial implications for the service, stating they were "commercial in confidence".
Mr Bacon, a member of the Commons public ac-counts committee, said: "At a time when hard-pressed NHS trusts are havingto make painful choices in order to reduce deficits,they are being forced to pay money they don't have and release staff they can't spare for something they don't want and doesn't work."
Connecting for Health, the NHS programme, said yesterday the secondments were agreed by senior managers when the contracts were originally signed.
"It was always recognised that it would be a challenge to source NHS staff," said the programme.
Accenture, too, has a deal for NHS staff to be seconded to the programme in the east and north-east but according to ministers no contracted financial obligation went with that.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/75fd04d2-f4f8-11da-86f6-0000779e2340.html
This just underlines the lunacy that is labour’s NHS strategy. Not only can the NHS trusts not afford to have staff not working for patients, this warns that the new IT system- which is itself under fire for not consulting with potential practitioners is even less likely to succeed. Please see Top UK IT experts call for audit of NHS (NPfIT) programme
It also raises the prospect of the failure of another labour policy of Dignity for the elderly: Chief execs should ‘take the rap’ if elderly failed on dignity when nurses are supposed to promote care of the elderly. But naturally enough Labour haven’t added an extra penny to fund this spin story.
And a similar obligation to supply staff in the north-west and West Midlands to CSC, the contractor for the region, has also been "re-moved" after it was found staff could not be spared from their clinical and other commitments.
The payments were disclosed yesterday by Computer Weekly and Richard Bacon, the Conservative MP, who established their scale through a parliamentary question.
Under the deal with CSC, the service agreed to provide 50 staff worth £6.9m a year over the 10-year life of the contract to help reduce costs, with CSC then able to charge the equivalent cost to the NHS if the service could not provide them.
Yesterday CSC said it had been agreed to "remove this obligation", with staff being provided on a voluntary basis. But the company declined to spell out the financial implications for the service, stating they were "commercial in confidence".
Mr Bacon, a member of the Commons public ac-counts committee, said: "At a time when hard-pressed NHS trusts are havingto make painful choices in order to reduce deficits,they are being forced to pay money they don't have and release staff they can't spare for something they don't want and doesn't work."
Connecting for Health, the NHS programme, said yesterday the secondments were agreed by senior managers when the contracts were originally signed.
"It was always recognised that it would be a challenge to source NHS staff," said the programme.
Accenture, too, has a deal for NHS staff to be seconded to the programme in the east and north-east but according to ministers no contracted financial obligation went with that.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/75fd04d2-f4f8-11da-86f6-0000779e2340.html
This just underlines the lunacy that is labour’s NHS strategy. Not only can the NHS trusts not afford to have staff not working for patients, this warns that the new IT system- which is itself under fire for not consulting with potential practitioners is even less likely to succeed. Please see Top UK IT experts call for audit of NHS (NPfIT) programme
It also raises the prospect of the failure of another labour policy of Dignity for the elderly: Chief execs should ‘take the rap’ if elderly failed on dignity when nurses are supposed to promote care of the elderly. But naturally enough Labour haven’t added an extra penny to fund this spin story.
posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic at
1:44 PM
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