This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Using tech properly could save trusts money, says Monitor director
Sewell-Jones said he was ‘keen to push’ the use of technology as a priority for NHS Improvement, which is being formed from Monitor and the NHS Trust Development Authority.
He said: “This isn’t something Monitor is geared up to do particularly at the moment but it’s something that I’m keen to push as part of NHS Improvement.”
Sewell-Jones advised that technology was vital to generating the £22bn efficiency savings required of the NHS between now and 2020. He said that he had learnt from ‘personal experience’ that when new IT systems were implemented at trusts ‘the old one could always do [the same thing] but no one had switched it on or used it’.
The Monitor director added: “Without more capital investment we could be driving more out of the technology we have available and that’s even before the cutting edge stuff 13-year-olds are doing at the moment that we’ll catch up with eventually.”
Sewell-Jones claimed that using technology more efficiently is one of several way health services could generate savings and that trusts who contend they are unable to increase efficiencies are speaking ‘rubbish’.
He said: “That is rubbish. There is more we can do. But it’s really hard and I can’t say to people, ‘Of course you can do it, because look what I did’, because the fact is it’s hard graft.”
Furthermore, the director added that trusts needed to examine their staff’s skills and use them better according to their skill sets. He said: “I suspect if you went on to many wards now you’d find jobs that a lower level admin member of staff could be doing but you’ve got a senior nurse who is sat in the office doing it rather than delivering frontline care.”
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