Autumn statement leaves NHS in precarious position  Former health and social care secretary Jeremy Hunt delivered an Autumn statement as chancellor that was focused on business, tax cuts, and an even more punitive regime for welfare claimants, but had nothing to say about public services, the NHS or social care. The autumn statement leaves the NHS in a precarious financial position. The Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England recently diverted £800,000 from winter, waiting list, and technology budgets to the frontline. But this week the Health Service Journal (£) reported that integrated care systems were reporting a combined deficit of £1.5 billion after six months of the financial year.   The HSJ said ICSs have been ordered to submit new plans to cover the gap, but Siva Anandaciva from the King’s Fund said this would push them into making “painful” cuts to frontline services. Meanwhile, the HSJ has reported that the DHSC/NHSE raid will lead to technology budgets being cut by £350 million. NHS England has been able to claim that it has met the government’s targets for 90% of trusts to have an electronic patient record in place by December (below). So the frontline digitisation programme may now be scaled back again (digitalhealth.net).

PAC slams New Hospital Programme The Commons’ Public Accounts Committee has said it has “no confidence” that the government will deliver its New Hospitals Programme. In a report, the PAC said “very little has happened” since Boris Johnson made a commitment to build 40 new facilities by 2030 as part of his campaign to be elected leader of the Conservative Party. An earlier report from the National Audit Office concluded that just 32 facilities could be finished by then, after the programme was rejigged to include hospitals with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, and 123 bids for a final round tranche of projects were rejected.   The NAO also warned that any NHP hospitals that are built could be too small, because the programme is assuming that the amount of time patients stay in hospital will fall and more care will take place in the community. The PAC agrees and describes these assumptions as “unrealistic.” It also wants to see faster action on RAAC, warning that if the rebuilding programme doesn’t speed up, “some hospitals may have to close before replacements are ready.” Finally, the PAC would like to see an end to raids on capital budgets, which have led to a record backlog maintenance bill of £10.2 billion.

NHS England confirms Palantir as FDP winner NHS England has confirmed that Palantir has won its multi-million pound contract to build a Federated Data Platform, alongside Accenture, PwC, NECS and Carnall Farrar. Palantir has been seen as a shoo-in for the contract since it was brought in to build the Covid-19 Data Store. However, it is controversial because of its links to US spy and policing organisations. NHS England says “no company involved in the FDP” will be able to access data “without the explicit permission of the NHS”, that data will only be used for direct care and planning, not research, and that GP data will not be fed into the national platform.

NHS England claims it has met its frontline digitisation target NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard told the NHS Providers annual conference that the government has hit its target for 90% of NHS trusts to have an electronic patient record by the end of 2023 thanks to go-lives at The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust. The milestone has been reached thanks to the frontline digitisation programme, which is aiming to complete the roll-out of EPRs to all trusts by March 2026. Hillingdon Hospitals is an Oracle Cerner Millennium site, while Sheffield has replaced a legacy EPR with Servelec Rio.

Health IT news: Northamptonshire Care Record goes live with Graphnet Health SCR; George Eliot picks Accurx for waiting list validation and patient communication; The Christie becomes the first trust to pick an openEHR waiting list validation and patient platform; and David Walliker gets a new job in Manchester  The Northamptonshire Care Record has gone live, combining information from 829,000 individuals registered with local GP practices with patient data from two acute trusts (digitalhealth.net). The SCR is built on Graphnet Health’s CareCentric software. The next phase will be to include data from other local providers, including social care organisations, the third sector, and the East Midlands Ambulance Service. George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust has picked Accurx for a platform to validate its waiting lists and establish whether people on them still require an appointment. The system has been tested in rheumatology and will now be used to update cancer pathways (digitalhealth.net).  The Christie NHS Foundation Trust has signed a two-year contract with Avenue3 to deploy its e-referral and patient engagement system, which is underpinned by openEHR. Health Tech World reported that the trust is the first in England to use the open platform. One of the best-known chief information officers in the NHS has been appointed chief digital and information officer at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. David Walliker is moving to the mega-trust from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, He previously held IT roles at two of Liverpool’s acute trusts (Health Tech Newspaper).