"It said that the fixed-price contracts used meant that their costs remained "broadly unchanged", despite the delays, but that it was likely to be 2014 or 2015 before every NHS trust was running the care records system.
Tim Burr, head of the NAO, said: "The challenge involved in delivering the National Programme for IT has proved to be far greater than envisaged at the start, with serious delays in delivering the new care records systems.
"Progress is being made, however, and financial savings and other benefits are beginning to emerge."
He said that the priority now was to finish developing and deploying the systems.
A spokesman for Connecting for Health, which is overseeing the project, said it "regretted" the delays.
He added: "The new IT systems in the NHS are on course to deliver better care and an estimated £1.14 billion in savings by 2014.
"The National Programme for IT has already delivered a total of £208 million in savings by providing quicker, more efficient and convenient patient care.""
On budget? Which budget, the original budget of £2.3 billion, the revised budget of £6 billion, the next budget of £9 billion or the last budget of £12.4 billion? So if the system is "on budget" at £12.4 billion then it is over five times ove the original budget.
I doubt that the BBC will ask this question, can't put any more pressure on the Government at this important time.
1 comment:
I agree that the phrase 'on budget' is rather open to abuse by the government. I wonder where this will all end? Just imagine how many schools and hospitals they could have built for that kind of money.
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