The NHS and Systems Thinking

Break up the NHS, was the previous posting.

Now a Conservative Party think tank is saying:
Break up the NHS IT.

They say it would create huge savings for the Taxpayer.

Why?

Because the £12 billion NHS IT programme launched in 2002, which is now five years behind schedule, which is the world's largest civilian IT project, and which is already billions of pounds in the red - is too big!

So what if it's too big?

To recapitulate the tenth of the ten Systems Thinking principles in the last posting:

Every system has an optimum size beyond which it ceases to be viable, due to (1) intra-relationship complexity and, (2) for organisations and project in organisations, bureaucracy and loss of human identity with the system as a whole.

An independent review of the NHS IT, commissioned by Health Minister Stephen O'Brien, concluded that:

1. The project had been too centralised, making it too big, inefficient, and costly for the taxpayer
2. 50% of the IT vendors/suppliers involved had already pulled out of the project.
3. The handling of the project to date had been "shambolic".
4. Its bureaucracy had been "hugely disruptive for the NHS " - with negative cost & care implications for patients.

When large, Stalinist, central planning government embarks on projects such as this, albeit with good intentions, they show themselves blind to the real choice-needs of people, the cost impact implications for the taxpayer - and an ignorance or denial of Systems Thinking.

For the sake of society, for the sake of us all, this and future governments need to embrace Systems Thinking.

The previous posting says why.