MTAS - RIP for the moment

You've probably seen this on the news or in paper somewhere, but the systems that was being used for Junior Doctors to apply for Training Jobs in the UK has had to be shut down as it had serious security problems. This came at the end of a long list of problems that have beset the system and its implementation.

I have also blogged on it a number of times see here. Dr Crippen has also blogged on it a number of times see here.

So now you maybe wondering who the guy is in the picture, well he's Paul Dacre and that name should ring a bell, he is the editor of the Daily Mail which is part of the Associated Newspapers Group (AN) and is on the Board of the Parent Company DMGT (Daily Mail and General Trust PLC).

So now you are wondering what this has to do with the MTAS system. Well the AN group also owns a few other companies including those who have websites here. One of these is Jobsite which you might have used, whilst looking for a job (clue here!). They also run, for the NHS, the website used to search for jobs in the NHS for England and Wales. It was this experience that gained them the contract along with Method Consulting for the MTAS system. Jobsite actually host and run the website for the NHS.

It is interesting to note that if you search the Method Consulting website here for MTAS, MMC or NHS you get no relevant results, are they ashamed or what?

The MTAS terms and conditions on their website used to have the following (It's not available at the moment!)

This web service is provided by *Methods* *Consulting* Ltd and Jobsite UK (Worldwide) Ltd for the Department of Health as a service for the NHS. The service is subject to the contract between the Department of Health and *Methods* *Consulting* Ltd as construed in accordance with English Law and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of England and Wales.
These terms and conditions apply to all users of the website.
While the Contractor intends this site to be continuously available, virus free, and to contain accurate information, the Contractor does not guarantee that it will. The Department and the Contractor accept no liability for any consequences arising from inaccuracies, viruses, the unavailability of the site, misuse of the site, or any User's inability to access or use the site.

Not bad so far apart from the continuously available bit. It then goes on with the following

Data Protection Notice

The Contractor records statistics about visits to the pages of this site to help us administer and improve the site. The personal data provided by an Applicant on a submitted application form will be passed to Recruiters in order for them to consider the application; it will be stored securely in the site's database and will not be available to other Applicants. The application data held on the site will be deleted 13 months after the end date of the recruitment round for which it was submitted. Appointing Employers will retain the application forms for appointed Applicants separately as part of their staff records.
Statistical data on recruitment activity will be provided to the Health Departments and Deaneries for campaign management and workforce planning.

Maybe that should should read slightly differently as it appears the site is open to all comers to do with as they like.

So what has the Daily Mail got to say on MTAS and the system. The latest article is here, no mention of any link here to the fact the Daily Mail might be in anyway linked to the mess that is MTAS. In fact checking through the Daily Mail site we find no link between MTAS and the Daily Mail or Jobsite. As one commentator in the latest article says:

"This is a system that was obviously failing as a project. They had to produce a very quick and dirty result in order to serve their customers. They didn't even do that properly in terms of the most elementary form of password protection.

"This has to be one of the worst types of public sector security failure that I can think of."

This sort of incompetence on top of all the other problems is nothing short of unbelievable.

Worse is the fact that as Dr Crippen reports

And now a trivial matter. Or a matter that seems consistently to be treated as trivial by the department. What happens to the doctors? MTAS, for all its failings, is their source of information about forthcoming interviews and appointments. There is nowhere else for them to turn.

And finally a quote from Mr Eugenides on this as my language does quite stretch to his levels:

Just stop and think about that for a moment. If I could access someone else's internet banking simply by changing the account number in the requested field, someone at RBS would be fired by close of business. In no other field of endeavour is incompetence and waste so routinely shrugged off as par for the course as it seems to be in the governance of the country.

Imagine a pile of shit so large it could be seen from space: the air black with flies for miles in every direction, rivulets of stinking liquefied effluvium wending their way from the base of the huge cack-heap into every nook and cranny of this land; an all-pervading stench so horrendous that it put families from Inverness to Exeter off their food. Wouldn't you expect someone to clean it up? Wouldn't you expect the arses that had deposited this great heap of filth to at least acknowledge their part in creating it? Instead, Patsy tells us that "fewer beds are a sign of success", that the NHS has just enjoyed its "best ever year" (presumably 2007 is already on course to be a fucking triumph), and that MTAS is the best thing since banana Nesquik.

What has this pile of cack cost us, well apparently over 5 years it will have cost us 6.3mm pounds. Its real cost will be in the damage it has done to Junior Doctors.

Heads must roll for this debacle starting with Patsy (Best year so Far) Hewitt.

NHS Blog Doctor: MTAS - what next?

Prof Alan Crockard's letter of resignation

The MMC/MTAS debacle of Junior Doctor's Training in the UK looks to have seen its first senior Resignation, Professor Alan Crockard has apparently resigned from his position as National Director for Modernising Medical Careers. Confirmation of the resignation or reporting of it in the mainstream media appears to be thin on the ground and even the Telegraph does not actually have a report on it , just the letter. Various Blogs by Health Professionals have the story from early this morning.

UPDATE: Telegraph appears to confirm story here:

Alan Crockard is an eminent neurosurgeon, and has been the national director of the Department of Health's programme, Modernising Medical Careers (MMC) and its online application service, the Medical Training and Application Service (MTAS), since 2004.

One paragraph from the letter is very interesting:

From my point of view, this project has lacked clear leadership from the top for a very long time. Moving to the last few weeks, I have become increasingly concerned that the well intentioned attempts to keep the recruitment and selection process running have been accompanied by mixed messages to the most important people in the whole process - the young doctor applicants.

I assume that this is a dig at Patricia Hewitt. We can only hope that she has got the idea and will follow Alan Crockard's example. This is however unlikely bearing in mind Labour's normal mode of operation of promotion on failure.

It was earlier reported today that he was being reported to the GMC by Lindsay Cooke, who founded Mums4Medics - a family support group for people caught up in the jobs fiasco, who wrote to the GMC naming Prof Crockard as he was

"ultimately responsible" for the MMC and its implementation.

"I respectfully ask the GMC to examine the conduct of Prof Crockard in this matter and, if it is found wanting, to consider disciplinary action,"

Full text of resignation is as follows.

Dear Liam,( Sir Liam Donaldson chief Medical Officer at the NHS)

I wish to resign from my position as National Director for Modernising Medical Careers with immediate effect. I am increasingly aware that I have responsibility but less and less authority.

I care deeply about medical education and training. In 2003 I moved from the College of Surgeons where I was Director of Education to join the MMC team. At the College we developed a competency based curriculum. These ideas rolled over into MMC where the team put together the Foundation Programme which was launched in 2005.

It also involved coordination of the stakeholders in curriculum development, training the trainers and carrying out numerous road shows to set the scene for consultants and trainees. It is now considered successful and fit for purpose.

In addition the doctors completing the Foundation Programme this year seem as if they will match well into the new Specialty Training Programmes. As a prelude to new Specialty Training, MMC worked closely with PMETB and all the stakeholders to facilitate the new competency based curricula and set the scene for such a radical change in training.

Manifestly, specialty training is an order of magnitude more complex than Foundation, but it became obvious that the MMC team's expertise was less used in planning of specialty rollout. MTAS was developed and procured by DH outside my influence.

An email (12 October 2005) to our team made it abundantly clear that "Debbie (Mellor) has been tasked with delivering a recruitment system to recruit junior doctor posts specifically FP's and ST's .......I am not clear how far you should (or want) to be involved in this. We don't want to tread on any toes, but equally we need to be clear about what level of autonomy this Programme has".

The MMC programme has been the subject of an OGC Gateway Review in September 2006 (DH331), they concluded "that the programme has made significant progress since the OGC health check in August 2005".

The report overall was supportive of MMC, but there was one serious red risk. This was to "identify a clear break point for the MTAS project beyond which the contingency arrangements should be activated". It also commented on the unclear leadership between DCMO and two senior responsible officers.

From my point of view, this project has lacked clear leadership from the top for a very long time. Moving to the last few weeks, I have become increasingly concerned that the well intentioned attempts to keep the recruitment and selection process running have been accompanied by mixed messages to the most important people in the whole process - the young doctor applicants.

I realise that the service must continue to allow patients to be treated and I know little of the law, but it seems to me basically unfair to advertise the possibility of four interviews and then suggest that these might not be honoured.

Equally devastating would be the suggestion of some stakeholders, that the completed interviews be discarded and the process be rerun.

I accept that in many areas and in many specialties, this round of recruitment and selection has been acceptable. But the overriding message coming back from the profession is that it has lost confidence in the current recruitment system.

With my very best wishes.

Alan

Prof Alan Crockard's letter of resignation

Lions led by Donkeys

According to the Telegraph article Andrew Lansley, the Conservative health spokesman, said today that a consultant wrote to him this week and said that doctors today were

"lions led by donkeys"

- a phrase used originally about First World War soldiers.

"He’s right. The appalling shambles made of Modernising Medical Careers risks undermining the morale and the future of the medical profession. What is the point of expanding medical school places and then destroying the career progression of junior doctors

I am assuming that the Consultant means that the Government are the Donkeys as some of the more senior members of the Medical establishment seem very similar to the Generals in WW1.

Any way it is good to see that David Cameron will be supporting the Doctors and I wish them all the best in getting this travesty overturned.

For earlier posts on MMC/MTAS look here.

MMC/MTAS on 18 Doughty Street tonight

18 Doughty Street will be discussing the MMC/MTAS farce tonight.

for previous stories see here

18 Doughty Street : Politics for Adults | TALK TV

Shock as 8000 Car Workers made Redundant.

If the details of this headline were true then every paper and TV station would be blaring it out 24 hours per day. But as its rich doctors who cares. It is the last story on the Health page on the BBC web site. It barely mentions on others. Channel 4 is about the only notable exception.

Review of flawed recruitment process welcome but does not go far enough, says BMA

The Department of Health has today (Tuesday 6 March, 2007) announced a review of the Medical Training Application Service for junior doctors.

In response, Dr Jo Hilborne, chairman of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, says:

“The government has finally been forced to address the appalling problems with this system. We have been warning since last summer that these reforms were being rushed through too quickly. From the point of view of the thousands of doctors who’ve been messed around, given incorrect information, or denied job opportunities that they deserved, it’s a shame the government didn’t listen then.

“Not only is this response, too late, it also does not go far enough. While we welcome a review, the only fair solution now is for the interview process to be suspended until it can be clearly shown that no doctor has been disadvantaged as a result of the government’s mistakes.

We are disappointed that the government has not invited a BMA representative to sit on the review panel, given that despite all the problems we have always tried to work constructively with them to make this process work.”

Dr Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the BMA Consultants Committee, adds:

“We have repeatedly highlighted countless problems with this system. The flawed implementation process has caused the medical profession to lose faith that we are appointing the best doctors to care for patients. Consultants have been placed in an impossible position by having to shortlist forms in too short a time. A review is welcome, but action is necessary and overdue.”

Patricia's response is awaited, though it looks like she' doing a Gordo and has disappeared, and is certainly not available to her constituents.

BBC report here.

Much better Channel 4 report of chaos here which includes decent video report.

Newswire Article: Review of flawed recruitment process welcome but does not go far enough, says BMA 06/03/2007

MMC & MTAS : The West Midlands Deanery Panel passes vote of no confidence

The MMC and MTAS system is beginning to fall apart at the seams. Previous posts had shown what effect this piece of Nu Labour is having on our young doctors.

Hopefully this will herald the demise of the person who is currently responsible for this pile of typically idealogically based garbage.

That will then definitely be the best year so far for the NHS.

NHS Blog Doctor: MMC & MTAS - part 6 : The West Midlands Deanery Panel passes vote of no confidence

Webcameron: Labour to make 8000 junior doctors unemployed (approx. a quarter of the junior doctor workforce)

Doctors are now trying to get the Leader of the Conservatives involved in the scandal of the new system for Junior Doctors Training.

Hopefully he will take this on and use it to blast away at the Government and at least try and help get the "Harridan Hewitt" to resign. The petition starts off

I would like to highlight an opportunity for you to gain several thousand extra votes if you can call the Government to task on the following issue. (If you can get the general public to take an interest through the TV News, then this is a General Election winner. At least you may be able to get Patricia Hewitt to resign. Presently the Public don't really know about this because, with the exception perhaps of Channel 4 News, the labour controlled BBC and media are not interested and there is very little publicity.

I have already voted for it and hope that anyone who sees this or a similar story does the same.

webcameron: Labour to make 8000 junior doctors unemployed (approx. a quarter of the junior doctor workforce)

BMA calls for delay to shambolic recruitment system

Following on from a previous post I see the BMA has called for a delay to the "Shambolic Recruitment System".

I would also recommend you have a look at Dr Crippen or any of the multitude of medical sites that are covering this.

Newswire Article: BMA calls for delay to shambolic recruitment system 02/27/2007

NHS Destruction Continues.

The destruction of the NHS by NuLabour continues with the introduction of MMC/MTAS. This is a new system for the training of Doctors in Hospitals. According to Dr Crippen

MMC, MTAS, call it what you will, pick your own acronym, is destroying the morale of young doctors in this country. They will leave the country. They will leave medicine. What other group of experienced young professionals are writing like this:


Trick-cycling For Beginners: It's over


HospitalPhoenix: I've got the fear


NHS Blog Doctor: MMC & MTAS - the combine harvester


All I can say is that during my younger days I spent a lot of time with Medical professionals, including many doctors who were either at Medical School or in Post Graduate Posts. Many of them were overworked and stressed during their training but none were anywhere near the stage above. They all knew that there was light at the end of the tunnel and they would go on to a successful career.