14.05.14
Choose and Book being ‘quietly dropped’
The incoming NHS e-Referral Service, to replace the £356m Choose and Book system, is to use “agile” and “open” technologies building on the success of the outgoing programme, NHS England says.
Choose and Book was introduced in 2004 as a national electronic appointment booking service,but the contract with Atos is coming to an end.
A recent report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) labelled the system “a missed opportunity to improve patient care and data quality”. Labour MP Meg Hillier, a member of the PAC, said the abandoning of Choose and Book was “another NHS cock-up”. “A system designed for use by GPs but only used by half of them... has been quietly dropped, so quietly that even most of the NHS seems unaware,” she said.
The report added that Choose and Book, launched under the £12.7bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT), had a chequered history and was under-utilised, meaning that annual savings of up to £51m are being missed.
Beverley Bryant, director of strategic systems and technology for NHS England, said: “When Choose and Book was introduced nearly 10 years ago it was a major step forward in creating a central appointments service with the aim of offering patients a choice of appointment at a time and place to suit them.
“As a result, up to 40,000 patient referrals are made through Choose and Book every day and to date over 40 million bookings have been made through the system. But we know that Choose and Book has worked for some and not for others and a combination of electronic and paper referrals is still being used in some areas.”
She stated that the new NHS e-Referral Service will build on the successes of Choose and Book and use the lessons learnt. “This isn’t about reinventing the wheel, it is about taking the next step.”
Part of NHS England’s commitment to making all referrals electronic by 2018, a major objective of the new NHS E-Referral Service will be to introduce functionality for patients as well as clinicians to facilitate choice and to make the booking experience more user friendly.
NHS England initially suggested e-referrals would not be mandatory, but it has not ruled out a system of incentives and penalties to ensure take-up.
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