patient record system

14,000 is a lot of patients to miss followup appointments. I do not think this feat could have been accomplished via paper:

Morecambe Bay missed 14,000 outpatients
E-Health Insider.com
7 February 2012

More on the travails of the UK's moribund National Programme for IT in the NHS.

It's officially gone "PffffT"...

NHS told to abandon delayed IT project
Denis Campbell, health correspondent
The Guardian, Wednesday 21 September 2011

£12.7bn computer scheme to create patient record system is to be scrapped after years of delays

I have a suggestion for the Queen:

Perhaps the NpfIT (National Programme for IT in the NHS) should be renamed the "National Programme of Failed IT in the NHS."

No new acronym will be needed.

For this pleasure, the UK has spent upwards of £13 billion.

If I were a proprietary health IT vendor, the following bolded passage in the new Healthcare Bill (PDF here) would make me a bit nervous:

SEC. 1102. ENCOURAGING MEANINGFUL USE OF ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS.

Too often, physicians acquiese to demands by hospital executives that they adjust to and use health IT, even if that health IT is flawed.

This is despite the fact that liability for patient care resides with the physicians, not the HIT vendor or executives.

Several physicians Down Under have had enough:

Doctors issue deadly warning
Daily Examiner, Grafton, Australia
David Bancroft | 23rd July 2009

What health IT mismanagement could not accomplish, perhaps international financial mismanagement will. Could this happen here?

This story reflects a veritable cornucopia of the issues I write about at Healthcare Renewal and at my site on HIT failure, with the added spice of the World Financial Debacle That Keeps On Giving, er, Taking.