CfH stripped of key roles and reorganised

Tags: Cerner CfH Connelly DH Informatics Lorenzo reporting

05 Mar 2009

In a major shake-up of health service IT, key leadership roles are to be moved directly to the Department of Health, with NHS Connecting for Health playing a strictly supporting role.

Documents seen by E-Health Insider indicate that the moves will make CfH a “delivery organisation”, with technology policy, technology and strategy questions decided by a team reporting directly to chief information officer for health Christine Connelly.

A new DH Informatics Directorate will be established, consisting of six directors reporting directly to Connelly plus Tim Straughan, chief information officer of the NHS Information Centre.

The six directors will include Martin Bellamy, director of programme and systems delivery, whose key objective will be “to deliver elements of the NHS systems portfolio.”

Intriguingly, the National Programme for IT in the NHS is only described as a short-term objective for the current head of CfH: “In the short term, the main area of focus is the National Programme for IT.”

Also eye-catching is the transfer of the role of technology officer from CfH to the DH, which will now set a common technical architecture for the NHS and ensure that systems conform to it. Paul Jones will transfer directly from CfH to the DH as chief technology officer.

The documents seen by EHI say: “The CTO will own the overall technical architecture to be used by the NHS and Department for Health and will ensure that systems developed conform to that architecture.”

The other director positions, yet to be filled are: a director of policy and planning; a chief business architect; a commercial director, informatics; and a clinical director, informatics. All sit outside CfH.

One senior NHS IT professional told EHI that the restruture indicated a major shift in power and resources: “The implication of this to me is that both the informatics architecture and the financing for that is moving back into the control of the NHS.”

EHI understands that CfH has also announced a restructure designed to enable it to refocus efforts and “build on the culture of delivery throughout the NHS.” In a letter to the agency’s staff, Bellamy said the restructure will “fully align NHS CfH’s systems of internal control with those used in the Department of Health.”

The new structure for CfH will have eight directors. The first three will all have dual lines of reporting as well as reporting to Bellamy.

They are: a finance director, who will also report to the director of NHS finance; a chief technology officer, who will report directly to Connelly; a supplier management director, who will report to the new commercial director, informatics.

The remaining five directors will be respondible for delivery business units. Three will be responsible for groups of projects.

There will also be a service management director. And for the first time, a Lorenzo delivery director will be appointed, though no counterpart Cerner delivery director is yet planned.

The two shake-ups are the first obvious outcome of the appointments of Christine Connelly and Martin Bellamy last September, and come against a background of rumoured lively conversations behind the scenes. The changes will come into effect on 6 April.

Jon Hoeksma

Reader's Comments

When will this be announced, and what of the LSP contracts?

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

05 Mar 09 11:03

The article says that these major changes will be implemented on 6th April - in 32 days from the EHI article - but there is nothing on the DH or CfH website (11.42 5 3 09). When are they likely to be announced - and, in the interests of transparency and accountability, details released?

What are the implications for having a DH manager for the delivery of Lorenzo? AFAIAA, the contract is with CSC who subcontract iSoft. will this change, and what are the implications for those of us in Primary Care who already have good, functional EPRs - and are paperless - but, under the strategic plans of SHAs and PCTs in NME are expected to migrate to it?

Let's hope for some new blood & ideas

05 Mar 09 18:03

Well it seems to me to be a step in the right direction. It is quite frankly about time that someone took control of the strategic direction from CFH, as well as policy etc and leave them with pure delivery.

I only hope that the new Directors who are appointed are "fresh new blood" with no previous history of working at a senior level in CfH etc.

We need new ideas, with people who can think "out of the box", There are some very good leaders in CfH, I have no doubt, but the vast majority appear to be just the same people moving around from one initiative to another and with something like the aims of NPfIT, well a different set of skills is called for.

Let's face it the delays in the delivery of Lorenzo etc can not alone be laid at the door of the LSP. The fact is that despite a strategic direction being set, there are just so many programmes of work, working in isolation, nothing seems to be joined up at all.

There are 10 top reasons why any programme or project fails. I think we've seen the lot.

a.stephens62@ntlworld.com

05 Mar 09 22:03

where, please, are the ads for these new posts?

Out of the frying pan for NHS IT

06 Mar 09 06:03

Hang on!

Didn't the DH orchestrate the "Granger programme" and the resulting "what to do with CfH problem"?

On that basis, the idea of moving control to the DH is rather worrying.

another role of the dice

06 Mar 09 07:03

beefed up IPU, trimmed down NHSIA.

You read it here first..

06 Mar 09 08:03

There is a possibility that this move may place CfH people within the Department they most need to influence.

The DoH has bowled NPfIT a succession of policy googlies since 2003/4 with huge IT implications e.g. New GMS Contract, Choice Agenda, Independent Treatment Centres, major PHCT reorganisations, 18 week wait, Darzi Centres to name but a few.

The hapless NPfIT has either been charged with enabling these (within structures, contracts and budgets which had not anticipated them) OR found CfH projects pushed far down Trust's to-do lists. Indeed sometimes it has been unclear whether enabling such changes in software >was< CfH's responsibility.

If this reorganisation results in better integration of NHS policy with the IT infrastructure then all the better.

The alternative explanation is pure political game-play. The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee may have been either outflanked or accommodated by this maneuver depending on your point of view.

http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/4513/pac_gives_npfit_six_months_to_deliver_crs

This retreat to inside the DoH's unassailable ramparts makes it possible to 'terminate' the project in name with minimal impact on contracts or staff no longer known at that address.

Who made thie decision?

06 Mar 09 10:03

I think the public deserve to know who is the current chief architect behind this change

rebranding not changing

10 Mar 09 22:03

Two points here really: whoever becomes the clinical director of informatics has a very uphill task given the NHS continuing fixation on administrative systems. He or she will have to be immensely tough to penetrate the Civil Service wall and give the clinical side the importance it requires.

Second thing is this continuing forlorn belief that the NHS can dictate the technical standards and architecture. It hasn't worked so far and simply re-branding people won't make it work now. Why is this so hard to understand? To impose such standards and architectures they have to be demonstrably good such that people will want them.....

Another layer of beuroacracy?

11 Mar 09 07:03

Having worked on the project for four years, this announcement seems as if all that is going to happen is the department of health is going to add another layer of hands on people into the framework, especially in regards to Lorenzo.

Surely this will cause more confusion and increase the timescales it takes to get things done, increase the money spent on the project and increase the complexity of the software as everybody will want their ideas to be implemented.

Can we just not go back to basics, allow the client to work with the software which is now on the ground, identify its good and bad bits, agree re-developments where needed and stop messing about. The delays in the entire project should not be blamed on the LSP's and software developers. Re-organising CfH and the SHA's every few months does not help and is a waste of time and money.