04.09.13
NHS IT fund gets further £240m boost
Hospitals, GP surgeries and out-of-hours medical services are set to benefit from £240m funding to boost IT, health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced.
The extra funding adds to the original £260m Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards fund, which was launched by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh in May. It will help ensure all patients can book GP appointments online and see their records online by 2015.
All NHS trusts are eligible to apply, but will have to invest half the money themselves, with the Government only committing to match-fund.
Hunt said: “This fund will empower local clinicians and health services to come together and find innovative solutions for their patients. Technology is key to helping our A&E staff meet the massive demand they face as the population increases and ages. This is something on which the Government must and will succeed.
Tim Kelsey, national director for patients and information at NHS England said: “A single patient record will help make the patient journey from hospital to home seamless, giving professionals from different health and care organisations access to information when they need it most, without patients having to repeat themselves every time they speak to a different doctor, nurse or care professional.
“This extra funding will help us better meet the overwhelming demand from the Safer Hospitals, Safer Wards fund announced in May this year. It's great news for the NHS and great news for patients.”
Jamie Reed, Labour’s shadow health minister, said: “David Cameron’s A&E crisis has been driven by the collapse of adult social care as council budgets are slashed, alongside the loss of 5,000 nursing jobs. Ministers must focus more on shoring up social care and ensuring wards have enough nurses, and less on pet projects.”
Chief executive of the NHS Confederation Mike Farrar said: “Patients find it massively frustrating when they have to give their personal details or medical history multiple times over, sometimes three or four times in one hospital visit. Clinical and support staff find it just as frustrating having to ask them.
“If today's funding is invested in the right tools and technology on wards, in clinics and in the community, clinical staff can spend less of their valuable time filling in forms and more of it giving patients the care and treatment they need.”
Trusts had to apply to the fund by the end of July, with the match-funded grants to be announced in October. The process for applying for a tranche of the new £240m fund has not yet been announced.
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