A troubled IT system for storing patient records, due to arrive at Kingston Hospital later this year, was on the agenda when the top NHS civil servant visited last week.
Delays in implementing the £12.7bn national Care Records Service (CRS) have already cost Kingston £500,000 in contractors and staff who have been kept on the payroll in readiness for its introduction.
The chief executive of the NHS, David Nicholson, and the leader of the national CRS programme, Christine Connelly, visited Kingston Hospital last week to see a demo of the system before it goes live in September.
Performance at the hospital will suffer when it goes live with the IT records system in September, Kate Grimes, the chief executive of Kingston Hospital, told councillors last month.
Ms Grimes told staff in her weekly email: “David seemed to be happy with the progress we are making and I’m pleased that we were able to show him what we are doing to prepare and talk him through some of the issues we are facing on CRS and more generally.”
Waiting lists at Barts and the London NHS Trust were the worst in the country when the hospital struggled to keep track of patients on its IT systems following the introduction of CRS.
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