Nigel Hawkes
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MILTON KEYNES
Medical and secretarial staff at a hospital have declared a new computer system as “not fit for purpose”. The Patient Administration System introduced to Milton Keynes General Hospital five weeks ago as part of the Government’s £12.4 billion IT scheme for the NHS, is not working, say 79 members of staff in a letter to the hospital’s management.
The setback is the latest to hit the National Programme for IT, run by Connecting for Health, a government agency. The rebellion at Milton Keynes emerged as Computer Weekly reported that Connecting for Health had sought to suppress a critical report into the system by the British Computer Society.
In their letter, the staff at Milton Keynes say the software is “awkward and clunky”. “In our opinion, the system should not be installed in any further hospitals.”
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So just the doctors and nurses who regard the clinical system as unsatisfactory for what they do? And an adminidroid who thinks it is fine for doing medicine and it is all the users' fault.
That might be a hint to the nature of the problem, given what hospitals are actually for.
Adrian Midgley, Exeter, UK
I have reason to believe the Milton Keynes deployment was far better and gave FEWER problems than at some other sites which has never got into the press. Unfortunately, it makes a reasonable deployment look terrible. I have to commend all the IT, Information, Back Office, and Fujitsu (as well as TCS) staff who put a tremendous amount of personal effort into this. 79 dissatisfied staff (mainly clinicians) have probably been gunning for failure since day 1. Some of the issues are to do with legacy processes and operaional management. The change team put a huge effort into making sure the new processes would work but as usual - the people on the ground didn't listen at a crucial time and weren't managed effectively by their divisions during transition. Granted there are some issues but they are not show-stopping scenarios. Let's face facts some staff just do not want to change the way they work.
An NHS Employee, Milton Keynes, Bucks
It's written by students in India.
Fact.
As an ex-CSC employee, I ought to know.
The British tax-payers should be up in arms.
James Deverwaux-Quille, Ironbridge, Shropshire