NHS hit by new tech failure as it scraps patient booking system

The NHS is quietly ditching an electronic booking system for outpatient appointments, Choose and Book, which has cost £356m since 2004, in a further sign of the difficulties of introducing efficient IT systems into the health service.

The decision to replace it with a potentially even more expensive e-referral scheme by 2016 follows a drop in its use by doctors and patients.

During a recent investigation into NHS waiting times by the House of Commons' public accounts committee, MPs were told by NHS staff that while some GPs liked Choose and Book, many did not, and that not all outpatient appointment slots were available on it, limiting its usefulness.

NHS England said last night the new e-referral system would use different technology, but it was unable to say how much the scheme would cost.

Meg Hillier, a Labour member of the committee, said: "It's another NHS cock up. A system designed for use by GPs but only used by half of them … has been quietly dropped, so quietly that even most of the NHS seems unaware.

"In the middle of all of this are patients. Choose and Book was supposed to speed things up but the evidence we heard in committee showed this was not so in most cases."

Choose and Book was introduced by the Labour government to enable patients needing an outpatient appointment to select, with their GP, a hospital appointment at a convenient date and time. The aim was to speed up the process and cut out the need for costly paperwork.

The Department of Health wants patients to become more involved in managing their appointments. The National Audit Office has estimated that 1.6m patients failed to turn up for first outpatient appointments in 2012-13, costing the taxpayer up to £225m.

But many patients and doctors found Choose and Book complicated and time-consuming. Tory MP and former GP Sarah Wollaston said the system suited patients who were good with technology but not those who were less so. She said doctors often did not have time to log on to it during appointments with their patients.

Wollaston, a member of the Commons select committee on health, added that technology could have drawbacks.

"You do have to be careful that when setting up this kind of system using the latest techology, that you do not inadvertently end up widening health inequalities in the process."

Una O'Brien, the permanent secretary at the Department of Health, said the replacement scheme would have additional features, and would be be available on mobile apps.

She told the Commons committee: "We are aiming to have 100% electronic referrals within the next five years – sooner than that if we can make it. That will cut out a lot of these errors." The idea of making it compulsory for GPs to use the replacement system when it comes on stream, with an inbuilt incentive and penalty scheme for doctors and hospitals, is being considered.

The decision to drop Choose and Book, and admissions that it was not being used by many doctors and patients, marks the latest of many IT failures in the NHS, where attempts to embrace technology in the quest for more joined-up care have encountered numerous delays and cost overruns.

A £12bn project launched in England in 2002 aimed to allow 50 million patients' records to be held electronically so that they could be accessed by staff in different parts of the service: primary care, hospitals, out of hours services and ambulance crews. But it was scrapped by the coalition after a series of setbacks.