BMA call on training reforms cost

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The British Medical Association (BMA) has written to the National Audit Office (NAO) calling for a full investigation into how much public money was pumped into implementing the reforms.

The heavily-criticised changes were introduced in 2005 aimed at speeding up the time it takes junior doctors to become specialists, but have been besieged with problems.

As many as 10,000 doctors will not receive a training post in England when their current NHS contract runs out this year as a result of an imbalance between the number of applicants using the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) and the number of jobs available.

In total, some 29,193 doctors applied for the 15,600 training posts available.

In addition, the online recruitment system crashed repeatedly, leaving thousands of doctors in limbo for months.

The Department of Health said the total cost of MTAS, including set up costs was £1.9 million in 2006-07 and the estimated cost over five years was £6.3 million.

In its letter to the NAO, the BMA said that on top of the IT implementation costs, there are likely to have been hidden costs to the taxpayer such as the continuing costs of using MTAS to collect data and the extra interviews that had to be arranged as a result of its failure.

Dr Andrew Rowland, vice chairman of the BMA junior doctors committee, said: "We know that thousands of doctors have had their careers messed up, that many of those who found posts still haven't been paid properly, and that others are going to be out of post next month.

"What we don't yet know is how much public money has been wasted on this failed experiment.