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Computer chaos at the Royal Free: in Way over their head?
ANDREW Way, chief executive of the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, sounds as if he is a gambling man.
As chairman of an overseeing body for hospitals in London, Mr Way was confident recently that the new Cerner computer system, trialled at his hospital, should be rolled out to hospitals throughout the capital.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, Mr Way moaned in BBC interviews how disastrously bad the system was – and what chaos it was bringing to life at the Royal Free.
He seems to be swinging back and forth.
In fact, the system has been in trouble since it was introduced at the Royal Free more than two years ago.
Doctors complained. Nurses complained. Records were mixed up. Patients probably suffered.
Apparently, 40 extra technical staff have had to be employed.
That sounds like a lot of extra salaries a week. Probably more than a million pounds a year in salaries alone!
Computer systems can be tricky. Central government has more than suffered its fair share of computer glitches.
It does seem as if the system should have been more gently introduced, perhaps on a “suck-and-see” basis at the Royal Free.
However, it looks as if it was introduced too quickly, and on too big a scale. Mr Way must be keeping his fingers crossed. If he gets it wrong, and if the system isn’t fit for purpose, Mr Way, who has proved in the past to be a dedicated NHS man, will face a problem – as will the hospital staff, as well as the patients.
Town Hall coalition’s rose-tinted crystal ball
THE coalition at the Town Hall must know something, Gordon Brown, as well as the greatest of economists in the UK, don’t know.
Apparently, they know how the economy will be behaving in the next two years because they have drawn up a budget that will freeze council tax for that period.
How any institution can definitively put together a budget for two years hence in this rock’n’ roll recession is a mystery.
But the top brains of the coalition feel confident enough to be able to forecast how money will be flowing back and forth in the year 2010/11 through the coffers of the Town Hall.
We are sure neither Gordon Brown, nor the Treasury, nor the Bank of England, feel as confident about what shape the British economy will be in so far in the future. Quite a few economists are predicting that the recession may poison the economy for three or four years ahead. |
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