Resource Management Initiative

HC Deb 19 October 1988 vol 138 c909W

Mr. Anthony Coombs

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he has any plans to extend the resource management initiative.

Mr. Mellor

The resource management initiative is a NHS management board and a joint consultants committee jointly sponsored initiative. The pilot projects will be subject to an interim evaluation this October and a formal evaluation in October 1989. The pilots have already demonstrated that certain elements—for example, the introduction of nurse management information systems and the feeding back to managers and clinicians of existing information—are areas that the majority of acute hospitals could usefully begin to introduce. We are considering how best to programme an extension of the initiative over the country as a whole.