HOSPITALS across Merseyside are refusing to implement the £12.7bn scheme to create electronic care records because of the risk to patient safety, a report by MPs reveals today.

No hospital in the region had introduced the much-criticised computer system by the end of last month – despite a deadline for the network to "go live" in the autumn.

Now the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said hospital managers are shunning the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), because they fear chaos and a risk to patients if they are later forced to revert to paper records.

Its report is the latest crushing blow to the scheme – the largest non-military IT project in history – which was already four years behind schedule, even before the latest delays.

And it echoes warnings, made 18 months ago by the former chief executive of Wirral Hospital Trust, that many doctors were "beginning to despair" about the project. Frank Burns memorably told MPs that Wirral trust had rejected introducing the first version – because it was inferior to the IT system it had set up way back in 1990.

Publishing today’s report, Edward Leigh, the PAC’s Conservative chairman, urged the Department of Health (DoH) to set a strict six-month deadline for improvement – then allow NHS trusts to explore "alternative systems".

He said: "The risks to the successful delivery are as serious as ever. Trusts should not be expected to deploy care records systems that aren’t working properly."

The NPfIT is meant to improve patient care by dragging paper-based clinical records for 50m patients – such as their current drugs, allergies and long-term conditions – into the 21st century.

The centralised database would allow 120,000 doctors, 400,000 nurses and 130,000 scientists and therapists to electronically access the records at all NHS sites across England – potentially life-saving in an emergency.

The entire north was meant to pioneer the system from the autumn, but the software – called Lorenzo – had not been introduced in any hospital by the end of 2008.

The report concludes: "Trusts will not go ahead with a deployment until they are satisfied that the system will not put patient safety or the running of the hospital at risk."