British Medical Computing is crap 003.

Britain has for many years been a great source of innovation and that includes in healthcare but unfortunately it does not have the ability to translate most ideas into positive actions. So GPs who created software to help themselves many years ago and have now had their ability usurped by the Party which has taken control of NHS GP IT all for the better, comrades, and only for the benefit of the administrator not the clinician.

The introduction of the NHS Smartcard means that the Party can turn off the ability of a variety of healthcare professionals to use NHS IT and stop them working without the need to consult any professional regulators no different to any totalitarian Party card issuer in the past be it Nazi or Soviet.

The Party being all wise took control of general practice IT away from GPs and substituted a National IT scheme so flawed it can be seen from space as an intellectual blackhole and put NHS IT idiots in charge. So instead of GPs and their staff having direct access to their IT suppliers they have for the past few years had to go through pseudo private entities called Commissioning Support Units (CSUs) which have lots of cosy meetings with GP IT suppliers which deliver bugger all useful on the ground. 

CSUs are another example of Dave’s Big Government (BG) you know the one where the consulting room is the command centre of the Supreme Soviet that is the NHS and was a ruse for private companies to come in and milk the NHS of cash and then be found wanting after numerous reconfigurations for the improvement of customer service - not. 

NHS IT and CSUs are where all the thick kids in your average Northernshire comprehensive school with an IT qualification and a polytechnic degree landed up for no one else would employ them. So GPs and their staff get what Dave’s BG is prepared to pay for just think e-referrrals and the NHS care on the cheap.

We have to say on this subject Praise be to the Party for inventing the fax machine for when it comes to e-referrals the fax will always get through and for someone inventing Kleenex to support Jeremy’s fantasies of a paperless NHS, for the NHS is, and still will involve, paper for many years to come just think how many hospital IT systems are paperless?

Think EPS (Electronic Prescription Service 2) how many times have GPs never heard this one: "You sent my prescription EPS and the chemist hasn’t got it. I want my prescription now". Cue the printer or the fax and a piece of paper that does the job.

A simple example is the fact that Dave’s BG now controls most GPs’ and their staffs’ computers to the point whereas before BG GPs and their staff had administrator passwords now they do not. Only Big Uncle Dave’s and Uncle Jeremy’s Soviet CSU staff have these but to get these you have to be very nice to your political Uncles and no doubt sit on their knees to get what you want.

So take the situation at 07.30 when someone comes into work and tries to log on and is prompted for an administrator password. You can’t ask the practice manager or a GP for the passwords for they no longer have these, they are not worthy of these, oh no comrade, you have to wait for the CSU password commissar, general practice sub commissar who being there to “support” general practice in their local CSU does not start work until 10.00 and finishes at 16.00 to allow family friendly working for “busy working people”.

So Dave’s and Jeremy’s BG paralyses idle working GPs and their staff for hours in order to maintain your confidential record's security from people who might actually need them and they do this day in and day out.

And then there is the browser issue. BMC can only allow GPs to run Internet Explorer 8 at best (we believe it is now at version 11 outside of NHS IT in the free world). Try viewing a copy of any GP magazine on this and see what you get. There are work arounds but guess what?

You will need an administrator password to be able to apply any of these but GPs and their administrative staff don’t have as many polytechnic degrees as the idiots in NHS IT and this may take days or weeks to fix until someone is deemed worthy enough to have admin passwords something that once all GP Practices had themselves. And what about all the security issues that out of date browsers pose? No problems comrades for NHS IT is like the Enigma code completely secure because it is unbreakable for it is as up to date as those who write British Medical software confident that Windows 3.11 is the latest and the best operating system in the world of BMC.

Of course comrades the CSU staff could just dial in to sort this out but guess what? The idiots in IT don’t have the administrator passwords only their senior IT managers have but they are always on holiday or “in a meeting” or doing something very important like Jeremy and Kleenex.

Anyone old enough to remember 1970’s Soviet hotels where as a foreigner in order to get into certain hotels you had to show your passport? To get access to a floor or a restaurant with real food you had to show your passport again. This was in a then “free” country and this is how easy it is to get an admin password to fix a problem in today’s NHS. And this also shows how poor any NHS IT software is for it is incapable of keeping up with changes in browser or operating system technology.

While a GP or their staff at home can freely apply updates to operating systems and browsers which improve functionality and security at work they are slaves to BMC and all of their advanced 1970 Longbridge techicians who are still stuck in a time warp that predates the Sinclair ZX, the Commodore 64 and Atari as does NHS IT as a whole. 

Praise be to the Party for giving via socialized medicine an IT system that means that a 5 year old computer at home is 20 years ahead of the brand new computers that your GPs and their staff are forced to use at work and worst of all you are paying quids over what it actually costs for crap by virtue of preferred bidders and CSUs.