WRITTEN ON March 25th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, We told you so..., What do we want?
Well, did the caring Department of Health receive the ministry of our JRRT report in a tender and creative spirit, and consider it might be mistaken? Not exactly, according to Smart Healthcare:
“It is simply wrong to claim that the Summary Care Record and other aspects of the National Programme for IT are unlawful,” said a spokesperson, adding that the report was “full of basic errors and below the standards usually expected for a Rowntree report”.
Oh really? Please tell us more.
“Neither patient consent nor confidentiality are being overridden,” the spokesperson added. “The aim of the National Programme for IT is to provide information to doctors and nurses which will save lives and improve the quality of care. Central to it is patient consent and the right of patients to opt out…The report’s comments on the Secondary Uses Service are also ill informed and inaccurate…We recently consulted widely on this specifically to ensure that patient consent and confidentiality are protected and that the public is aware of uses that any data is put to.”
Wibbi if the DoH systems were indeed demonstrably lawful.
Wibbi they genuinely supported confidentiality and consent, instead of merely asserting they did?
Wibbi the aim of NPfIT was to help patients and mdical staff instead of managers and administrators, and that it had been formally designed from the needs of patients and medical practitioners with their active participation?
Wibbi DoH had indeed placed consent and the right to opt out as central? We wouldn’t have needed this waffle or this robust public information barrage or “Lord” Warner’s leakiest sieve talk. They’ve been fighting it tooth and nail all the way (as in: “report anyone trying to opt out to the Secretary of State”).
They can bluster and waffle all they like. I fear we are going to be using the new IdealGov “I told you so” category rather frequently in future coverage of the NPfIT.
3 Responses to “D’oH: this pains me more than it will hurt you…”
Help me out here. The DoH and you are saying there are factual errors in the parts ofthis report dealing with the NHS. But what are they?
An LSE friend has a sense of deja vu and reminds me of Baroness Scotland of Asthal dissing the LSE ID scheme report on 15 Nov 2005:
One reason why we treat the LSE study with caution is because it is just not as rigorous as one would normally come to expect.
But seriously, if there are factual errors in the JRRT report (and the authors concede one which is that we failed to realise that fingerprint data from those not convicted was now routinely held, just as DNA data is) tell us.
Who’s blustering and waffling here?
You have just delivered what should have been the most intellectually coherent and damning study of UK public policy since 1997. Because you failed to apply the most basic fact-checks to a very large area of public service, the NHS, you fucked it. Every minister and perm sec now has an excuse to bin the whole work. At what cost to the ‘mature debate’?
You know the tools. For fuck’s sake get on with using them to get this stuff right.