Another shock 'who would have guessed it' story, this time from Computer Weekly (the last bastion of investigative mainstream reporting by the looks of things).
Aparently, Tone (who can't tell a computer from Gordon Brown's arse from what I've heard, but I could be wrong) wanted the timetable for the Electronic Patient Record to fit in with the 2005 General Election.
New Fuckwits? Deluded? Say it isn't so, say it isn't so....
Aparently, Tone (who can't tell a computer from Gordon Brown's arse from what I've heard, but I could be wrong) wanted the timetable for the Electronic Patient Record to fit in with the 2005 General Election.
Paul Cundy, GP IT spokesman for the British Medical Association, said it appeared that the Department of Health had been "wildly, even delusionally, optimistic about the timetable for the NPfIT in order to secure funding".
New Fuckwits? Deluded? Say it isn't so, say it isn't so....
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7 comments:
Hmmm heard the one about NHS Choices?
Health Secretary demands new patient-focussed website and demands it three month-hence,goddamit.
How to build it? Well obviously a team of 160 people. Because you need that many people to build something that takes most of its content from NHS Direct or is provided by PCTs, hospitals etc. You then employ expensive consultants to lead your teams, who surprise surprise, charge eye-watering amounts of money but have very little web experience whatsover.
How to sell it to the rest of the NHS? Big expensive roadshows at which you wheel out your expensive consultants to talk about the Web 2.0 opportunities that exist whilst ignoring the fact that your shiny website is to all purposes unusable. Throw around ideas like 'a myspace for doctors' and social networking for patients. (I kid you not)
160 people? I build more complex websites with a team of 4. Leaving the NHS was the best thing I ever did.
Well, I can say it isn't so, but that wont make it what I say true.
Same as I can say a green alien slimed through my letter box this morning. But that wont make what I say true either.
While you hit the nail on the head with the line of "who could have guessed it" there is one salient point.
Informaion and knowledge of events which have happned over the past 12 months is well known about by those with connections to the health service/medical blogs (about the hottest bad of such dicussion). However, the incompetance and treatment of the NHS by nuLab is now being made prevalant in the publics mind. That should worry the government, and be a better thing to keep the public on the side of the respective professions.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
I agree with fat trev.
Four people who know what they're doing can achieve a lot in 3 months (management always want it in two though). 160 people can achieve nothing in 3 months.
Like a beaten wife, the government keeps going back to the big consultancies, giving them billions fo pounds of our money and getting a good shafting and a couple of black eyes.
To put it in perspective, Windows Vista is estimated to have cost $10 billion to develop. OK, it's dreadful but it mostly works and it's very complicated. We're paying 4 times that for what?
Hang on a minute....the last bit of this post. The quote from the BMA..were they actually showing some signs of standing up to the DOH?
Could a neurology person please confirm the beginnings a BMA spinal bud? :P
Dr. Thunder
www.twoweeksonatrolley.blogspot.com
The overspend of the NHS IT project is truly staggering. It can only be a state run/sponsored project that can overspend in this way, any one else would have gone bust ages ago. It does, however, stir some dark memories. I have worked on many large projects with high IT content and the vast majority came in on or near to budget. I recall one time, a long time ago, when I was a project engineer advising the project stage manager and the project accountant at a meeting with a supplier. We had reached an impasse because the supplier was unable to supply some kit to our project for a figure that we could accommodate. There was an adjournment whilst the suppliers held a whispered conversation in which I thought I heard the word “nimrod” mentioned several times. After this we quickly reached an agreement and consequently proceeded negotiating with the aforementioned supplier.
After the meeting I asked our accountant what all this was about, what the hell had Elgar got to do with it or had I misheard (I am pretty deaf). Our accountant just laughed and said that they were merely tacking the additional unforeseen expenditure to their contract with the MOD onto the grossly overspent Nimrod project. He said it was common knowledge in accountancy circles that the Nimrod project was used as a “cash cow” by unscrupulous MOD contractors. You might think this not just unprofessional but criminal. I certainly did.
What is going on is that the Government are in the hands of projectors. They are bewitched by these snake-oil salesmen who can solve their problems if they go on spending even more money. When things don't work then spend evenmore money. This is especially true with I.T., the canal building of today. This is new, poorly understood by the uninitated and bewilderingly clever.Easy to find a sucker. The same is true of polyclinics and so on. alos see well known story about an emporer and his new clothes.
All this is a gratuitous waste of money when mt hospital trust hasn't got enough money to pay the staff wages.
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