Management Toolkit

NPfIT to go local by August

Kablenet.com

Published: 15 Jun 2007 17:25 BST

A top official of the NHS National Programme for IT has said the switch to more local responsibility should be largely complete by August.

Richard Jeavons, director of IT service implementation at Connecting for Health (CfH), said a number of key measures in the National Local Ownership Programme (NLOP) should be carried out by 31 July.

These include getting the key people in place, providing a detailed organisational design, and transferring some of the responsibilities for implementing the programme.

"The process will be over by then, but we believe some behaviour will still have to change," he said.

Under the NLOP, CfH retains responsibility for the commercial and contractual aspects of NPfIT, while local organisations have taken over responsibility for implementing the objectives. The change has involved the transfer of some resources away from the central body.

Speaking at Smart Healthcare 2007 expo on 13 June, 2007, Jeavons said there is still a need to clarify some of the issues around responsibility and accountability under the NLOP, and to ensure the capabilities of suppliers are honestly appraised. Some elements of the programme have suffered from over-optimism and some people not being sufficiently averse to risk, he added.

"We need to bring information management and technology out of its silos in the NHS and onto the management agenda," Jeavons said. This will involve changing behaviour and more engagement at senior level, ensuring there is the right capacity and capability in future plans, and getting more clinicians mobilised behind projects.

He acknowledged there has been some tension with NHS foundation trusts since the launch of NPfIT, and that this still needs resolving. This is part of the challenge in pushing a programme from the centre in what he described as "a variagated beast like the NHS", in which organisations have their own rules and priorities.