A US company contracted to provide IT technology for the National Health Service is set to receive a £2 billion extension despite the failed project being abandoned.Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) has reportedly informed Wall Street that it expects its contract to provide electronic patient records across the NHS to be extended.

Taxpayers are now facing an estimated £2 billion bill, despite the company already failing to deliver a fully functional version of its software, The Times reported.

The £11.4 billion National Programme for IT, set up in 2002 by bliar, was at the time spun as the world’s biggest civilian computerisation project.

It aimed to give doctors instant access to patient records wherever they were being treated and CSC had signed a deal to computerise records in most of England.

Digitising the medical records of the country’s 62 million people was the core objective of the National Programme for IT in the NHS, accounting for £7 billion of the total estimated cost.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, announced in September that he was abandoning the scheme to create a national patient database because it had “let down” the health service.

He made the decision to “urgently dismantle” the failed project after criticism it was not value for taxpayers’ money.

Yet the company stated in official US papers that it was in talks with the British Government for its contract to be extended until 2017, at a cost of up to £2 billion.

Computer applications installed as part of the scheme have also failed or been scrapped.

However, £250,000 in bonuses has been paid by the DoH to 80 people involved in the scheme as a reward for “an exceptional contribution to delivery”.

CSC, one of the world’s biggest IT providers, had been contracted to provide patient record software, known as the Lorenzo system, to 166 NHS hospitals. But it has delivered on 10 projects. None of those systems is fully functional.

CSC has signed deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds with Royal Mail, Identity and Passport Service and UK Atomic Energy Authority.

The Coalition’s Major Projects Authority, established to review Labour’s financial commitments, found the scheme was not fit to provide services to the NHS.

A cross-party committee of MPs concluded the programme had proved “beyond the capacity of the DoH to deliver”.

Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said it was “shameful” to pour more money into a failed initiative.

Cancer care on the NHS lags behind that in many other developed countries because Labour wasted billions of pounds on PFI schemes, bureaucracy and inflated salaries for managers.A report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has found that, despite record spending on health care, cancer survival rates in Britain are worse than in Slovenia and the Czech Republic.

Survival rates for breast cancer, prostate cancer and cervical cancer were below the average for the 34 developed countries in the study.

Mr Lansley lays the blame for the poor performance on the previous government’s failure to make sure that extra investment in the NHS reached the front line. He claims patient care was ignored in favour of increased salaries and botched computer systems.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Mr Lansley says: “Unfortunately this report shows how much work there is to do to deal with Labour’s legacy of neglect and mismanagement of our NHS.

“They hugely increased spending on the Health Service, but wasted much of it on managers, failed IT projects and unsustainable PFI projects.

“They failed to focus on what really matters – patients – which is why we still have some of the worst cancer outcomes amongst comparable countries.”

Under Labour, spending on the NHS trebled, reaching almost £100 billion in 2009, but money for treating cancer still lags behind much of the rest of the world.

A report by the Policy Exchange think tank last year found that England spent around 5.6 per cent of its health care budget on cancer care, compared with 7.7 per cent in France, 9.6 per cent in Germany and 9.2 per cent in America.

In September it emerged that private finance initiatives, introduced by Labour to fund capital projects, have left 60 NHS hospitals on the “brink of financial collapse”. Meanwhile, the pay of NHS chief executives has risen, with typical earnings now more than £150,000.

The OECD figures reveal that the best breast cancer survival rates were in the US, where 89.3 per cent of women were alive five years after being diagnosed. The average across all OECD countries was 83.5 per cent, while in the UK it was 81.3 per cent.

Survival rates for cervical cancer were worse. Norway topped the table with 78.2 per cent still alive after five years, compared with 58 per cent of women in the UK. There were also more hospital admissions for asthma and other lung conditions than the average and infant mortality was higher.

The report also showed that consultations by doctors have fallen, and were below he OECD average in 2009.

Katherine Murphy, the chief executive of the Patients Association, said: “The NHS provides some excellent care but it does fall down on many counts. We know from patients phoning our helpline that the quality of care that they have experienced can be very poor and sometimes it is downright neglectful.

“Rather than trying to tackle the issue of poor care, the Department of Health is demanding that the NHS makes £20 billion of efficiency savings while spending a million pounds a day on a reform plan that doctors, nurses, patients and NHS managers all say risks irrevocably damaging the NHS.”

From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Cancer-cash-wasted-on-NHS-salaries

Health workers at a Glasgow hospital are staging a protest later over a 113% increase in parking fees.The monthly cost of a permit for the multi-storey at Glasgow Royal Infirmary (GRI) has risen from £42 to £89.50.

Parking fees at most Scottish hospitals were abolished in 2009 but remained at three sites where car parks were built under Labour’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) .

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said a limited number of £25 permits were available for staff who needed cars.

The multi-storey car park, which opened in 2005, is owned by Impreglio Car Parking and managed by Apcoa under contract to the health board.

Approximately 940 subsidised permits are issued with priority given to staff such as consultants who need to travel between different sites.

Other staff can apply for these permits, but demand outstrips availability and not all applicants are successful.

At the time, Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon urged health boards to limit and reduce the charges until the contracts came to an end.

In September, the issue was raised in the Scottish parliament by Glasgow Kelvin MSP Sandra White.

She was told that the first minister sympathised with the staff, but the Scottish Government was bound by the terms of the PFI agreement signed by the previous Labour administration.

A spokeswoman for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “Unfortunately, as the car park is privately-owned, we do not have any control over any tariff increases that Impreglio choose to make.”

The protest was due to take place at the hospital car park from 13:00.

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-15622723

Single women are being offered fertility treatment by almost a fifth of NHS trusts casting doubt on the Government’s family friendly credentials.Women not in relationships are receiving publicly funded IVF despite official guidance that suggests support should go to couples who have been trying without success to have a baby for several years.

Meanwhile in other parts of the country married couples are being denied help in starting a family, forcing them to spend thousands of pounds on private treatment.

It comes after a Labour nanny state law removed the requirement for fertility doctors to consider a child’s need to have a male role model before going ahead with IVF.

Critics say the Government, which David Cameron promised would be “the most family friendly we’ve ever had in this country”, should tackle the postcode lottery of IVF provision and ensure that the needs of children are put first.

Frank Field, the Labour MP who carried out a high-profile review into poverty and life chances last year, said: “It’s clearly wrong that while couples in stable relationships can’t get IVF and in other areas, single women can.

“It’s really important that Government ministers speak up for children who are the ones left out of this. It needs someone in a position of authority to reflect what most taxpayers think.”

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester who once chaired the ethics committee of Britain’s fertility watchdog, said: “The irony is that at the very time research is showing the need for both parents, we are writing fathers out of the legislation.

“It’s one thing for a mother to find herself a single parent because of tragic circumstances. It’s quite another to plan for a situation where the child comes into the world without having a father or any possibility of having a father.”

Most local health authorities stipulate that couples must have been in a relationship for two or three years to qualify for IVF treatment.

That requirement is based on guidance issued in 2004 by the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure (Nice), the NHS rationing body,.

It states: “Couples in which the woman is aged 23–39 years at the time of treatment and who have an identified cause for their fertility problems … or who have infertility of at least three years’ duration, should be offered up to three stimulated cycles of in vitro fertilisation treatment.”

The document does note that the guidelines do not address social criteria “for example, whether it is single women or same-sex couples who are seeking treatment”.

However the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 removed the reference to “the need for a father” when considering the welfare of the child when considering fertility treatment, replacing it with “the need for supportive parenting”.

Gareth Johnson MP, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Infertility, said that trusts offering the service to single women were going against one of the guiding principles of IVF, “that you are treating an infertile couple, not an infertile individual”.

Mr Johnson, the Conservative MP for Dartford, said: “Speaking in a personal capacity, if you are going for IVF, you are trying to create a baby, so there should be some evidence of a stable background, which you would expect to be a couple.”

Earlier this year he led an APPG report that found startling differences between what health authorities offered in terms of IVF.

It found three-quarters of Primary Care Trusts were failing to offer three cycles of IVF, as stipulated by Nice. Each cycle comprises a woman’s ovaries being stimulated to produce eggs, which are then fertilised in vitro and implanted in the womb. Spare eggs should be frozen for use if the first attempt fails.

The report found five trusts offered no IVF at all – Warrington, West Sussex, Stockport, North Staffordshire and North Yorkshire and York. Since then, NHS West Sussex has decided to start funding IVF again.

Many trusts have also started putting in place further barriers to IVF funding – for example demanding obese women lose weight – in part to limit demand as health budgets tighten.

Against a background of increasingly scarce provision, as the NHS tries to save £20billion by 2015, Mr Johnson said the decision to offer IVF to single women was misplaced.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Single-women-being-offered-IVF-on-the-NHS

Foreign doctors who cannot speak English are to be banned from working in NHS hospitals and clinics, the Health Secretary will announce today.The NHS will introduce mandatory language tests for doctors moving to Britain after training elsewhere in the European Union.

The decision follows a series of cases in which patients have died or suffered poor care as a result of doctors speaking sub-standard English.

The issue was brought to national attention three years ago when Dr Daniel Ubani, a German-trained GP on his first out-of-hours shift in Britain, killed David Gray, 70, by giving him 10 times the normal dose of diamorphine.

In his speech to the Conservative Party conference today, Andrew Lansley will say that the Medical Act will be amended so that doctors must speak good English to practise in Britain.

“I am determined that doctors who come from overseas to work here in our NHS must not only have the right qualifications, but also the language skills to practise here,” the Health Secretary is expected to say. “We will amend the Medical Act to ensure that any doctor from overseas who can’t use a decent level of English is not able to treat NHS patients. This is not about discriminating; we’ve always appreciated how much overseas doctors and nurses give to our NHS. It is simply about our absolute commitment to put patients’ safety first.”

There are more than 88,000 foreign-trained doctors registered to work in Britain, including 22,758 from Europe. They account for almost a third of the total.

Under the proposals, local NHS trusts would have a duty to check the language skills of foreign-trained doctors before they can be employed. In addition, the General Medical Council would be given powers to take action against doctors when there were concerns about their ability to speak English. At present, only doctors from outside the European Economic Area are routinely scrutinised for their language skills before being registered by the GMC.

This means that doctors from Canada or Australia are routinely tested for their language skills while those from countries such as Poland and France are not.

It had previously been thought that European Union laws ensuring the freedom of movement of labour prevented language testing. However, the European Commission has recently stated that the language tests would be legal.

Dr Ubani, who admitted he had never heard of the drug he gave to Mr Gray, was struck off by the GMC in June last year but still practises in Germany. His poor English meant he was refused work by the NHS in West Yorkshire but was accepted in Cornwall and Camb-ridgeshire, where he saw Mr Gray.

Since the case, the GMC and other NHS leaders have repeatedly warned that some foreign doctors’ language skills are so poor that patients are being put at risk.

Compulsory language tests for foreign doctors will raise concerns that the NHS could be left short-staffed, such is its reliance on overseas medics. Ministers believe that the majority will reach the necessary standard of English.

Mr Lansley will today deliver a robust defence of the Government’s health policy, saying that money is being diverted from cutting bureaucracy to front-line services.

“Unlike Labour, we will make sure that every penny of our investment goes right to the patients who matter, not the huge Labour bureaucracy which we inherited,” he will say. “And all that is why, since the election, we now have 1,500 more doctors and 5,000 fewer managers in the NHS.”

He will also claim that hospital infection rates have fallen and the number of people being treated in mixed-sex wards has fallen by more than 90 per cent over the past eight months.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Conservative-Party-Conference-2011-doctors-from-overseas-must-speak-English-or-be-banned

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 warns.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 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.

There is already evidence that waiting lists for non–urgent operations have begun to rise as hospitals delay treatment to save money. Adding to this are growing fears over the impact of the financial crisis on care this winter.

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 £5.4billion, because the required payments have risen sharply in the wake of the recession.

Mr Lansley said: “Over the last year, we’ve been working to expose the mess Labour left us with, and the truth is that some hospitals have been landed with PFI deals they simply cannot afford.

“Like the economy, Labour has brought some parts of the NHS to the brink of financial collapse. Tough solutions may be needed for these problems, but we’ll help the NHS overcome them. We will not make the sick pay for Labour’s debt crisis.”

He said hospitals would not be allowed to collapse financially.

“There are many hospitals that are well run, do not have a legacy of debt and do have projects which are perfectly sustainable. My point is that we have looked since the election and are working together with individual trusts to arrive at a place where they are financially, and in terms of the quality of their services, sustainable for the future. We can only do that if we work closely with them,” he said.

“This is about making very clear that we are not only working on unsustainable PFIs, but also working with legacy debt that the NHS has been left with, working on the IT programmes which were on an unsustainable scale of contractual commitments that didn’t meet the need of the NHS’s customers.

“Across the board, we have to tackle Labour’s legacy of poor value formoney and debt.”

Over the next few weeks, Department of Health officials and executives at the 22 trusts will develop detailed plans for dealing with the crisis. Their proposals are expected to include significant cost–cutting and the renegotiation of PFI contracts.

Money will also be moved from NHS trusts that are in better financial shape to cover the debt costs at those that are struggling. However, officials are braced for the need to use Whitehall funds to bail out some hospitals.

Among the trusts which have contacted Mr Lansley to inform him of their severe financial problems are several London institutions, including South London Healthcare, Barking, Havering and Redbridge, and North Middlesex.

Outside the capital, other trusts to have approached the health department include Wye Valley, Worcester Acute Hospitals, Mid Yorkshire, and Walsall.

After the general election last year, Mr Lansley ordered officials to establish why some NHS hospitals were under–performing. The health department is assessing the financial position of every hospital. It is understood that the PFI costs have emerged as a leading factor in poor patient care in some areas.

The Health Secretary decided to disclose the list of hospitals in difficulty and is expected to announce the rescue plans for each trust next month.

Taxpayers are having to pay more than £200 billion for schools, hospitals and other projects whose capital value is little more than £50 billion.

In one example, a hospital in Bromley, south east London, will ultimately cost the NHS £1.2 billion, more than 10 times what it is worth. Another hospital was charged £52,000 for maintenance that cost £750. The annual cost of the schemes is almost £400 for each household.

The public payments for PFI deals are typically linked to inflation and therefore the cost to taxpayers has increased by up to a third since the beginning of the credit crisis, according to the National Audit Office. Last month, MPs on the Treasury select committee effectively called for a moratorium on new PFI projects, which it said were “like a drug” as the costs were not apparent at the outset.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, has tightened the rules on the deals.

Earlier this year, John Healey, the shadow health secretary, admitted in an interview that Labour ministers had failed when negotiating the multi–million pound schemes for hospitals.

“There is definitely a case for saying we were poor at PFI, poor at negotiating PFI contracts at the outset,” he said.

Companies who run PFI schemes boast profit margins of up to 71 per cent on the projects, but have come under growing pressure from MPs and ministers to return some of their “windfall profits”.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-hospitals-crippled-by-PFI-scheme

The Department of Health should consider abandoning the disastrous £12 billion NPfIT project to computerise all patients’ medical records according to a powerful group of MPs.The integrated electronic care records system was a central part of Labour’s £12 billion National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

The Public Accounts Committee says that although £2.7bn of taxpayers’ money has already gone on the scheme, it is unclear what the benefits have been and so ministers should think about whether the rest of the cash could be better spent elsewhere.

Although the intention was to create a single network that would allow NHS staff across England to access any patients’ details, the report says this will not happen now and the country has been left with a “patchwork” of costly and fragmented IT systems whose future is uncertain because of reforms to the health service.

The chief executive of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, also comes in for criticism for failing to oversee the project properly while civil servants provided “late, inconsistent and contradictory” information to the MPs’ inquiry.

Margaret Hodge, the committee’s chairman, said: “The Department of Health is not going to achieve its original aim of a fully integrated care records system across the NHS. Trying to create a one-size-fits-all system in the NHS was a massive risk and has proven to be unworkable.

“The Department has been unable to demonstrate what benefits have been delivered from the £2.7 billion spent on the project so far.

“It should now urgently review whether it is worth continuing with the remaining elements of the care records system. The £4.3 billion which the Department expects to spend might be better used to buy systems that are proven to work, that are good value for money and which deliver demonstrable benefits to the NHS.”

The integrated electronic care records system was a central part of Labour’s £11bn National Programme for IT in the NHS, which was set up in 2002 and faced repeated criticism since then over its cost and technical problems, most recently from the National Audit Office.

In the report the MPs say the intention to allow rapid sharing of patients’ records was “worthwhile” but the Department of Health has been unable to make it work.

They claim that creating a single system was always a “massive risk” especially as clinicians were not asked for suggestions on its operation.

In the north, midlands and east of England just 10 of 166 trusts have received only a basic system, while no mental health body has received one. Dozens of different interim and local schemes have been devised, at greater cost.

Whitehall officials are said to lack “basic management information” on the number of systems built and their cost, even though there is a body overseeing the whole project with 1,300 staff that has spent £820million.

Sir David Nicholson was accused by the committee of having “lacked the capacity to meet his responsibilities fully” as Senior Responsible Owner for the scheme, leading to “increasing costs and delays”.

The Department of Health is now trying to renegotiate some contracts and is working on a slimmed-down “menu of modules” that hospitals can choose for their patient records systems, but there is no guarantee the systems will work with each other.

In addition, the Strategic Health Authorities responsible for delivery of the programme are being scrapped and there is “considerable uncertainty” over how the new NHS bodies will adopt the IT systems and how much it will cost them.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said: “This is yet more evidence that Labour’s botched approach to IT in the NHS failed taxpayers and failed patients. Their one-size-fits-all IT programme has once again been found unworkable.

“This Government is taking action where Labour failed. Already, we have reduced expenditure on Labour’s costly IT schemes by £1.3 billion. We are making sure that systems are not imposed on the NHS from the centre which organisations do not want. And we will shortly announce our plans for even stronger action to deliver value for money for taxpayers and the NHS.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-should-consider-abandoning-7bn-IT-project.html

Deprived areas in England will lose out to affluent parts of the country under health spending reforms Labour has claimed- despite repeatedly creating those same postcode lotteries when they were in power.
Changes to funding formulas means poor health rates will be given less consideration when cash is allocated, the party said.

It suggested areas like Manchester and the London borough of Tower Hamlets would lose out to parts of the wealthy south east, such as Surrey and Hampshire.

Labour based the claims on an assessment of funding reforms by public health bodies in Manchester.

But the government has disputed the allegations and claimed Labour’s figures were misleading.

Department of Health officials said primary care budgets in Surrey and Tower Hamlets would go up by a similar amount this year.

The Conservatives claimed every area would have suffered health funding cuts under Labour.

A Conservative party spokesman said: “This is yet another own goal from Labour. If they had won the last election, the NHS would now be being cut by £28 billion across the country. Every area would have seen spending on the NHS cut – as it is in Labour-run Wales.

“This Government is increasing spending on the NHS in real terms over this parliament, and every region of the country will receive more money as a result of this investment.”

Health Direct has repeatedly tracked Labour’s proud boast when it was in power of creating postcode lotteries based on it’s voting constituencies:

Friday, April 13, 2007 Labour voting areas get most PFI NHS cash
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2007/04/labour-voting-areas-get-most-pfi-nhs.html

Wednesday, November 22, 2006 Hewitt defends NHS cash for Labour voting areas
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/11/hewitt-defends-nhs-cash-for-labour.html

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 NHS cuts twice as likely in Tory and Lib Dem areas
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/10/nhs-cuts-twice-as-likely-in-tory-and.html

Monday, September 25, 2006 NHS closures rigged in Labour voting constituencies
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/09/nhs-closures-rigged-in-labour-voting.html

Friday, September 15, 2006 Labour accused over hospital cuts in marginal constituencies
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/09/labour-accused-over-hospital-cuts-in.html

Scrapping the controversial and delayed NHS electronic records project could cost more than seeing it through to completion, a parliamentary committee has heard.
The project to install electronic patient records systems at health trusts in the north and east of England and the Midlands is years behind schedule.

The programme has been described as not being “value for money” in a report from public spending watchdog the National Audit Office (NAO) and critics have called for the project to be abandoned.

But yesterday, Department of Health (DoH) CIO Christine Connelly told the parliamentary public accounts committee that cancelling the contract with supplier CSC could potentially leave the DoH “exposed to a higher cost than the cost to complete the contract as it stands today”.

She said if the contract were terminated, the resulting contractual costs could run up to “several hundred million pounds”, with the possibility that the supplier could seek damages.

Still further costs could be incurred during the process of moving health trusts over to new care records systems, she said.

But Connelly went on to say that the DoH is still considering all options for the contract with CSC, which the DoH has previously stated includes termination.

Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, told the committee that the DoH is not currently minded to cancel its contract with CSC: “That’s not what we’re planning to do at the moment.”

Bizarrely he said the DoH could still get something “really good” out of its contract with CSC.

Care records systems are being installed across the whole of England, although progress has been slowest in the north, east and Midlands, the NAO report found.

CSC has repeatedly missed it’s required targets- known as milestones, for the rollout of the care records systems.

By March this year, CSC had missed 67 milestones set under its Local Service Provider (LSP) contract, and recently suffered a further setback when one of four trusts chosen to be early adopters of the care records system pulled out of the project.

The NAO report found that £2.7bn has been spent installing care records systems across the whole of England, and that there is a further £4.3bn still to be spent.

The care records system is being installed in the north, east and Midlands by CSC under the terms of its LSP contract, which is worth just over £3bn, but the DoH has said it expects negotiations will reduce the contract’s value by about £500m.

From: http://www.silicon.com/doh-cio-warns-on-cost-of-scrapping-e-records-project

NHS patients are getting “precious little” from the NHS electronic care records system in England, the National Audit Office (NAO) has found.
The £7bn system to replace paper files is falling further behind schedule and in places where it has been introduced it is not working as it should.

The National Audit Office also said some patients would not even get one as large chunks of the NHS had pulled out.

In conclusion, the NAO said the system was not providing value for money – something the government rejected.

The Electronic care records are the key part of the overall £12.4bn NHS IT project.

The scheme was launched in 2002 by Tony Bliar with the aim of revolutionising the way the health service uses technology and also includes developments such as digital x-rays and fast internet connections.

It is the third time the NAO has looked at electronic records – and each time the findings have been more damning.

The report from the NAO presents a depressing account of delays, contractual wrangling and technical glitches.

The original vision for the scheme was compelling – a national network connecting hospitals, GP practices, ambulance services and mental health trusts, and an end to the tortuous paper trails that have caused frustration and misery for doctors and patients alike.

But the complexity and cost of the scheme meant it was always seen by many as a high risk strategy. And when it ran into trouble the plans were scaled back, and the original vision set aside.

Many GPs and hospitals are now working with different systems, prompting the NAO to question whether further investment in the national programme would be pouring good money after bad.

The latest report details a range of problems that the programme is struggling with.

In London, all GP practices and more than half of hospital trusts have pulled out, while in the south three-quarters have. However, this has not been accompanied by a proportionate drop in cost.

Meanwhile, the contract covering the rest of country is currently being renegotiated. Even after such a scaling back, roll out in places that remain part of the system is still proving difficult.

The NAO said it doubted the final deadline of 2016 – which is already six years later than originally envisaged – would be met.

And even in those trusts that have electronic records, there are problems. For example, some hospitals have struggled to introduce electronic prescriptions.

The NAO said the difficulties were caused by a range of factors, including the government being too ambitious, difficulties with technology and the complexity of the NHS.

The problems have prompted some critics to call for the entire scheme to be scrapped – although this is something the NAO stopped short of suggesting.

The government has already announced there will be a review of the project. This is due to start next week.

Tory MP Richard Bacon, a member of the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee and long-standing critic of the plans, said: “It is perfectly clear that throwing more money at the problem will not work.

“This turkey will never fly and it is time the Department of Health faced reality and channelled the remaining funds into something useful that will actually benefit patients. The largest civilian IT project in the world has failed.”

But the Department of Health said while the original vision “was flawed”, the project still had the potential to deliver value for money.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, of the British Medical Association, said: “We cannot turn the clock back, but this report provides useful lessons on how best to use resources in the future.”

From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13430375