Half of PCT IT staff left in the dark over mergers

A telephone poll of newly merged primary care trusts by EHI Primary Care has revealed that almost half of the 40 PCTs contacted do not yet have plans in place for their individual IT departments.

EHI Primary Care contacted trusts prior to them merging on Sunday and found that most had not got past appointing new chief executives and chairs, and remained uncertain what their re-organisation plans – including IT provision – would be.

Over half of the PCTs contacted said they were unclear of how future plans would shape up for IT services. Those PCTs that already had shared IT services appeared to face the least disruption from the PCT mergers, which have cut the numbers of PCTs from 303 to 152.

A spokesperson for the North Yorkshire & York PCT said: “So far only the chief executive and chairman of the new PCT have been appointed and no structure for the new PCT has been published yet. In due course clearly a unified IT strategy addressing these issues will be produced but in the meantime existing arrangements are continuing.”

The lack of planning among some trusts comes as little surprise to some IT managers, who told EHI Primary Care that they were sure merging would have an impact on jobs.

One, who wished to remain anonymous, told EHI Primary Care: “We haven’t been told of any plans yet, and we don’t know what will happen, but it is a worrying time for us. Rumours have been heard of integration and we don’t know if there will be enough room for all members of our team. It’s all very frustrating.”

Within the North and the Midlands, seven of the 30 trusts contacted have already moved towards integrating their IT services into one central informatics service. One well-established example of shared IT services is Wirral Health Informatics.

A spokesperson from the new Wirral PCT, the merged organisation from the two previous Wirral trusts, told EHI Primary Care: “Wirral Health Informatics Service (WHIS) has provided a Wirral wide service to both PCTs as well as Wirral Hospital NHS Trust. They will continue to do so under the umbrella of the newly established Wirral Primary Care Trust, which brings together the two Wirral PCTs.”

A spokesperson from the new Leicester City PCT added: “We have moved towards a centralised Health Informatics Service, and after initial teething problems, the staff are used to the new surroundings and are able to carry on as they were before. As a result, we do not anticipate any problems with support or installation from the IT team after we merge.”

Derbyshire County, Nottinghamshire County, Manchester, Bradford & Airedale, Leeds, Dudley and South Staffordshire also told EHI Primary Care they have integrated services ahead of the mergers and will see no repercussions as a result.

However, in the South all of the ten trusts EHIPC spoke to confirmed that they had integrated their IT systems using independent informatics services and they believed that Connecting for Health procurements would go-ahead as planned. London PCTs have not been merged.

A spokesperson for Mid-Essex PCT told EHI Primary Care: “IT in Essex is not affected. We successfully integrated all our IT personnel to a new site in Witham under the Essex Shared Services name and they have done a fine job in creating our new websites and re-directing our e-mails to the new PCT addresses. I see no problems with Essex carrying on with IT projects at this time.”

A spokesperson from East and North Hertfordshire added: “IT is already run from a central informatics service centre, which we will host along with West Hertfordshire PCT. Apart from the new names, not much has changed and we anticipate that support and procurements can carry on as normal.

Others with a central Informatics Service were Surrey, West Sussex, West Kent, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Devon and the Isle of Wight.

For 23 trusts of the PCTs contacted, over half of the sample size of 40, IT departments have been left wondering what will happen next.

A spokesperson for Cumbria PCT added: “Decisions are yet to be made. So far, the trust has only made some board appointments and so we cannot speculate on what will happen to whom, until we know how the board plans to change things, which could be some time away yet.”

Even this is not a certainty for all trusts with a report by the NHS appointments commission indicating that only 92 out of 150 trusts had appointed a new board chairman ahead of last Sunday’s merges, and so decisions may be a while off yet.

A spokesperson from County Durham PCT told EHI Primary Care: “We are merging, but at the moment we haven’t appointed a new chief executive, so until then it’s business as normal, with the structural decisions to be made after we make the necessary board appointments.”

A spokesperson from Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale PCT added: “The structure of the new Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale PCT has not yet been finalised and therefore it cannot be disclosed as to which directorate will house IT as directorates are still to be ratified by the new trust board. Informatics staff will continue to be involved in developing the new structure.”

They added: “The new Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale PCT will continue to work jointly with the other PCTs and trusts within the local health community to deliver the National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT).”

Almost all of the trusts spokespeople said that they believed that the NPfIT will not suffer as a result of the PCT mergers, with GP Systems of Choice and the Choose and Book 3.2 system still on course for installation within their trusts.

Dr Richard Vautrey, a GP in Leeds and GPC negotiator told EHI Primary Care that IT mergers will only be successful if the different areas coming together can work well together.

“It will depend on different areas working together, on whether the key individuals can adapt to the way of new organisations, how well the merged organisations have been working together to the different arrangements, in order for there to be good conclusions.”

Dr Paul Cundy, joint chair of the Joint IT Committee of the GPC and RCGP, added: “I think it’s likely to throw them all up in the air again. What happens is the same old people get appointed to the same jobs in different areas, and all of a sudden they ask everyone to start changing the ways they work causing carnage and commotion.”

A spokesperson for the NHS Alliance said it was too early to tell what sort of disruption the PCT mergers could have and they “expect structures to emerge in the next three months.”

Sue Hodgetts, chief executive of the Institute of Healthcare Management said: “While everyone welcomes the financial savings that these changes may bring to management costs, we should nevertheless spare a thought to many casualties of this process.

“The NHS will have lost a significant and, perhaps, irreplaceable body of management talent – many of whom will have jumped, rather than wait to find out whether they had jobs to go to on 1 October.”

The new NHS chief executive David Nicholson commented: "We need to create an NHS that delivers better services for better value. PCTs are at the very heart of making this vision a reality. Our commissioning needs to be responsive and innovative, using services that patients want, in the place and time that they want them, whilst making the most of every penny spent.

"The move to fewer, more strategic PCTs – more closely mirroring local government boundaries – means we are better placed to make this happen."