Camden News: Royal Free Hospital | Andrew Way | Computer Chaos

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Camden News - by TOM FOOT
Published: 19 February 2009

Andrew Way

Hospital chief apologises over computer chaos

THE chief executive of the Royal Free has apologised to his staff after months of computer chaos at the Hampstead hospital.
Andrew Way said the disaster-prone digital appointment booking system installed on June 17 had led to the “toughest days of his career” and admitted there had been a “poor service to patients”.
The system – replacing paper patient records with a new computer system – has crashed repeatedly, sending patient appointments haywire and blowing a £10million hole in the hospital’s budget.
In a BBC radio
interview on Thursday Mr Way was at his frankest. “It is disappointing that the work we’ve had to do to get this system together has caused our staff so much heartache and hard work,” he said.
“It is true to say that many medical staff are incredibly disappointed with what they’ve got and I have personally apologised to them for the decision to implement the system before we were really clear what we were going to receive. We had been led to believe it would work.”
Mr Way added: “I think for all of us its been incredibly stressful. I have had more doctors and nurses talk to me about how terrible they feel for providing such a poor service to their patients over the last six months than in my whole career in the NHS. I’ve had some of the toughest days of my career around this.”
Cerner Care Records Service was installed in the Royal Free as part of a £16billion National Programme for IT pilot. Hospital chiefs proclaimed the service would speed up waiting times and allow all medical staff to access patient records with a special swipe card.
The hospital admitted that some patients may have been wrongly exposed to x-rays and that patients were booked into empty rooms.
The massive financial blow means the Royal Free has had to put its application for Foundation Trust status – whereby a hospital becomes financially independent from central government – on hold and thousands of appointments have been either delayed or affected.

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