Most doctors have lost all confidence in the Government's ability to deliver real improvements in healthcare through its controversial NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT) which is beset with "distrust and cynicism", according to the results of a survey released on Tuesday.
Only one percent of more than 1,300 doctors surveyed by research firm Medix rated progress on the national plan as good or excellent.
Support for the programme is lowest among GPs with 75 percent rating progress so far as poor or unacceptable.
The NPfIT was introduced with the intention of wiring up the NHS and giving patients and doctors a wide range of new electronic services for booking appointments, providing electronic records and better management of healthcare.
Doctors have been losing confidence in the NPfIT for some time, but until recently many were reasonably confident the programme could deliver on many of its goals. Three years ago, almost half of all doctors said they believed that the massive spending involved in the NPfIT was a good use of resources.
According to this latest survey, only 17 percent said they thought that was true now.
The loss of confidence comes in the light of the warning in November 2005 from NPfIT boss, Richard Granger, that there is a real danger that the whole project could be derailed by problems with a system that allows patients to book their own appointments.
The £24m 'Choose and Book' system is meant to allow patients to choose from at least four hospitals when booking an outpatient appointment through their GP surgery.
Talkback
I'm an IT engineer looking after GP networks and I am of the opinion that doctors will have many more problems until the government sort out the management structure within its trusts IT departments. Most of our managers have worked their way up through the ranks and, in my opinion, have a lot to learn about IT! For example, recently it was decided by a senior manager that we were moving over to a cooperate network solution for the desktop. Yes, good idea, but he chose a 6 year old OS (well... 5 really!), Windows 2000, even though we have recently bought/rolled out over 500 PCs with XP on them! We are again buying hundreds of PC's with XP licences however this time Windows 2000 has been installed on them even though some of our software suppliers only support XP. Another example is that we've spent tens of thousands of pounds on an anti-virus solution that works really well only now they've decided to go with another supplier that we already know offers a solution that we can't even update DAT files over the network! We work in an environment where what management say goes. No discussion, nothing. If managers actually listen to the guys out in the field then they can make an informed decision and offer the best support for our doctors. I realise that this is not exactly what this article was talking about but if you look at it from our level and see the problems up above then it’s no wonder these large projects have problems. If the government actually took a closer look and kicked some arse then some of these projects might actually get rolled out on time and on budget. Unless things change it's only a matter of time before doctors lose faith in IT altogether!