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HSEA P-PARS debacle

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  • 06-10-2005 8:03pm
    #1
    democrates
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,046 ✭✭✭


    I can't believe this p-pars disaster, that in this day and age and with that amount of money spent that the software or hardware are so bad that it must be abandoned. It's said to be working away in some places, but the letter from st james hospital ceo to the hse is shocking -
    "In essence," Mr O'Brien states, referring to the PPARS pilot project at St James's, "the hospital is now unwilling to continue with an arrangement which clearly threatens its basic functioning, its abilities to meet its fiduciary (monetary) accountability obligations with assurance, and its credibility and relationships with its workforce."


    Techncally, it sounds like each hospital has it's own history of systems, it's amazing how these can evolve and end up in a nightmare of patches and manual workarounds. Nonetheless the mess works, and to try to replace one module without replicating it's links with others can be sub-optimal, even retrograde.

    So the problems seem to be both inherantly technical as well as around it's isolation from other systems, and lack of ease in upgrading. Also, having read this p-pars project presentation and the p-pars web page describing potential benefits, perhaps there is some local resistance to the process redesign it is intended to implement. I'm reading between the lines, this project seeks to apply the HSEA Rule-Book, whereas local hospitals may currently enjoy alternative arrangements.

    Trying to achieve these changes using an IT project as a trojan horse is common practice, but bad practice. The political difficulties around changing the relationships between management, consultants, doctors, nurses etc. can delay and subvert IT projects, ramp up costs, bring failure or even disaster. Achieving agreement forprocess redesign should in the main, be done first and seperately with all stakeholdrs represented around the table. And it shouldn't come out of the IT budget.

    Hmm. I wonder if that staff member who was paid €1m in error got mixed up with some consultant?


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