Cost of vital NHS 24 patient helpline rockets by £50m
Health chiefs: ‘Systemic failure’ in IT project as bill soars and delays mount
A TROUBLED NHS IT project is set to cost taxpayers £50 million more than originally forecast after health chiefs admitted that a systemic failure lay behind huge budget overruns and repeated delays.
NHS 24’s new telecommunication and patient information system has been hit with a further setback as it emerged that the bill for its implementation is expected to spiral by another £7.6m. It was originally due to be up and running by mid-2013 but is already overbudget by tens of millions of pounds and due to be delivered three years late.
The organisation, which offers the public urgent medical advice over the phone, said a humiliating episode last November, when the new system was abandoned, on the grounds of patient safety, days after a long-awaited launch, was responsible for the latest surge in costs.
NHS 24 offered an unreserved apology for its failure in implementing the project which it admitted will now not bring the benefits it had initially put forward to justify the upgrade. Its former chief executive John Turner is to be grilled by MSPs tomorrow as part of a probe into problems with the scheme. Mr Turner’s successor and the organisation’s finance director are also set to appear before them.
In a submission to Holyrood’s public audit committee, NHS 24 said that the crisis-hit system, which it claimed following the abandoned launch three months ago would be reintroduced early this year, now will not relaunch until the summer.
It pinpointed a systemic failure around programme governance as the root cause of the delays and cost overruns, admitting that neither NHS 24 bosses nor the Scottish Government had put in place measures to mitigate against substantial risks presented by the programme. While it insisted it had learned from mistakes, it said its approach had been risky and expensive.
It said: “The original business case was inadequate, the programme governance ineffective, commercial management was weak, too much reliance was put on suppliers’ promises and the organisation had insufficient understanding of call-centre system implementation to successfully launch.”
The failure of Capgemini, the firm hired to design the software, to come up with a working solution by 2013 had exposed the underlying weaknesses in the project, NHS 24 said.
Dr Richard Simpson, Scottish Labour’s public-health spokesman and a former NHS consultant, said the new setbacks summed up the SNP government’s bungled approach to long-term planning in the health service.
He said: “While health boards like Greater Glasgow and Clyde are debating what services to cut in some of the most deprived parts of the country, this project is running at tens of millions over budget and years behind schedule.
“Their management of IT projects in the NHS in particular is an absolute farce. When the NHS 24 IT project failed at launch after supposedly rigorous pre-launch testing, why is it taking a further nine months to correct the faults? I have no confidence at all in the new SNP oversight system for these IT projects.”
In its written submission to MSPs, NHS 24 said additional costs as a result of issues following last year’s longawaited roll-out, which saw staff told to revert to using pens and paper after it quickly emerged that the new system was not functioning properly, are set to cost as much as £7.6m over and above an already upgraded estimate of £117.4m. The project began in 2009 and was approved on the basis it would cost £75.8m.
Despite bosses insisting that the new system for handling calls and patient information had been thoroughly tested last year, staff members reported calls from patients not coming through to them – and a nurse found she was unable to transfer a patient who needed emergency treatment to 999, meaning the system was quickly ditched.
Mary Scanlon, the Tory MSP and deputy convener of the Public Audit Committee, said: “Most hard-working Scots will be appalled to learn that so much of their cash has gone on a telephone system which is not fit for purpose, with the costs and savings
probably not ever being realised.”
A spokesman for NHS 24 said: “It is now clear that, as with other public-sector technology programmes in the past, NHS 24 did not have the required level of expertise and knowledge to deliver such a large-scale IT programme.
“We are absolutely committed to resolving all outstanding issues and implementing the new system during 2016, so we can continue to support the public with high-quality, safe and effective services.”