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HSC needs another £5million to deliver the island's Electronic Patient Record programme - just six months after saying it was going to come in under budget.
Deputy Al Brouard yesterday told the States that rather than being delivered later this year, at a cost of £17m - below the original £20m budget originally allocated - the new EPR programme will actually cost £23m and not be fully delivered until 2026.
HSC had originally wanted it to be ready for use by October this year, but the committee's President said earlier this year that it would actually be ready by March 2025.
The change to the new system - which was agreed by the States four years ago - won't now actually be fully implemented for another two years.
Yesterday, HSC President Deputy Brouard was allowed to explain this position to the States, using an emergency rule of procedure.
Pictured: A delay in the delivery of the EPR was announced in May. The project delivery date has been extended further, and it is going to cost more too.
He explained that HSC first became aware of the additional delivery delay and the budget issues on 13 August, before updating Policy and Resources on the situation on 27 August.
Yesterday was the first States meeting since HSC and P&R became aware of this situation and Deputy Brouard used it to update his political colleagues on "one of HSC's most complex programmes".
He said that implementing a new IT system in a health and care environment "was always going to be a challenge and this is evidenced in other jurisdictions," adding that "from the most recent review, it is clear that it will take longer and will cost more should the scope of works and rigour remain unchanged".
He explained that the current budget for the programme is £17.31 million, which was "reduced on best advice at the time", from an original cost of £20m, agreed in 2020.
Deputy Brouard said HSC now needs "around £22.2 million to complete the programme".
"The currently agreed funding envelope with an optimism bias of only 2% is in hindsight far too low for such a complex IT programme," he added, explaining that the "inherent complexity of the programme" has added to the workload with additional unforeseen costs materialising.
Deputy Brouard explained that the additional £5m now needed will mainly be spent covering costs incurred by ongoing recruitment challenges.
This time HSC doesn't need more money to pay for medical staff, it needs to bring in private consultants to ensure it can deliver the EPR programme, said Deputy Brouard.
"The original premise for this programme was that we would be able to recruit the necessary skills required to deliver the whole programme but this has proven to be a challenge," he said.
"We have been unsuccessful in attracting all the staff with the requisite skills and experience and hence we have had to employ those within private consultancies to ensure the successful completion of this programme. Approximately £1.8m of the increased costs result from having to rely on external consultancies."
Deputy Brouard also explained that despite working with the States IT partner, there have been more than half a million pounds worth of unforeseen costs around the creation of the IT infrastructure itself.
"We are working with our partner, Agilisys, to progress the additional engineering and programme management works needed around the data centre/IT infrastructure which will cost an estimated £0.6m," said the HSC President.
£2.5m is needed to cover growing costs relating to "extending the programme team and (the) use of external suppliers over this longer period," he added.
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