Ireland suspends two national health IT projects

The Irish Health Service Executive (IHSE) has announced that it is to stop the development of two controversial new health service computer systems. Originally due to cost just £6.2m (€9m), the two systems have so far cost £80m (€116m) and are still not fully implemented

The IHSE announced on Thursday that it would suspend the rollout of both a controversial new HR and payroll system, and a separate system for financial management.

Both systems are based on SAP implementations, with project management carried out by consultants Deloitte and Touche. PPARs is designed to handle the payroll for 140,000 staff, while FISP is intended to handle financial management and budgeting.

Reported problems of the system include limited take-up, massive cost over-runs on the original project and significant failures, including overpaying mistakenly paying one employee £690,000 (€1m) in a salary transfer.

One source familiar with the programme told E-Health Insider that the project demonstrated the pitfalls of a big IT project specified by civil servants, implemented by management consultants. "The complexity of SAP was not understood by those who made the decision".

Announcing the decision on 6 October, Professor Brendan Drumm, chief executive of the IHSE said he was happy with the decision to suspend further implementation of the two systems.

Quoted in the Irish Examiner he said it was too early to say if the system had a future in the organisation. “It does work in very many different environments. It is a huge, internationally-used system. What I have to determine is can it not only work but can it work effectively and cost-effectively for this organisation.”

Professor Drumm said that part of the difficulty stemmed from having merged from 11 health boards into a single HSE, and the review needed to examine whether the plans for the project are still applicable following this reorganisation.

The PPARs project began in 1997 and initially involved just five health boards, together with St James’ Hospital, Dublin. The initial cost for the ICT component of the project, minus consultancy fees, was £6.2m (€9 million).

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said that the PPARS payroll system, which began in 1998 had not been handled well, and that consultants had been overused, and that "excessive costs" had been paid to Deloitte &Touche, according to reports in the Irish Times.

However Ahern also said that the Irish Health Service Executive, should "continue to try and get it right and use the money correctly,"

Both the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and Minister for Health, Mary Harnet, have been strongly criticised in the Irish parliament, the Dail, this week for the problems with the PPARs system

The PPARs payroll system had cost £80m (€116m) by the end of last year and is expected to cost a further £38.6m (€56m) to complete, but is so far only used by 37,000 of the health service’s employees St James’ Hospital and three former health board areas. Further criticism has been levelled at the excessive use of consultants Deloitte & Touche, who have been paid £34.5m (€50m).

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said that the PPARs system "patently didn’t work" and asked "where are the systems to protect the taxpayer in respect of the consultants brought in to advise on how this should operate and who have been paid €50 million".

He called for the review to cover all aspects of the project from its start, including asking "who were the experts who were brought into this country on a regular basis, some from as far away as South Africa."

The FISP financial management system is still at an early stage of development and is understood to be on time and budget, having so far cost the health service £20.7m (€30m).

However, the HSE is reported to be concerned that because the project is a sister project to PPARS, based on the same SAP system and using the same consultants, Deloitte & Touche, it could potentially result in massive cost overruns too.