Dr Foster takes on NHS Choices

17 Nov 2008

Health information provider Dr Foster has launched an alternative site to NHS Choices.

The company, which lost out in the bid to run the DH flagship site, today launched Drfosterhealth.co.uk, which brings together information from its consumer guides to hospitals, consultants, birth and complementary therapists.

The website aims to be “the complete online medical guide resource” for consumers, who will soon be able to add their own health page on the site.

Dr Foster Intelligence won the initial 18-month contract to establish and run NHS Choices, but lost out to Capita earlier this year when the DH ran an £80m procurement to deliver it for the next three years.

Dr Foster’s Hospital Guide provides detailed information on the 30 most common operations performed in England, including waiting times, length of stay, readmission rates, post-op mortality, revision rates, infection control and the Hopsital Standardised Mortality Ratio. NHS Choices also offers a comparison service by hospital or procedure.

The data on the new Dr Foster site is drawn from questionnaires sent to all hospitals in England and information from Dr Foster Intelligence, the joint venture between Dr Foster Holdings and the NHS Information Centre.

Alex Young, senior project manager and content editor for Dr Foster’s website, said it aimed to help patients and GPs work together to make an informed choice about patient care.

He told E-Health Insider: “Lord Darzi’s report talks about the importance of competition in the NHS. We are coming from that angle, providing a comparative view and focusing on patient choice and competition between hospitals.

"Our aim is to give patients much more detail and is drawn on our experience of what information patients are looking for before they make their choice.”

The launch of the website has been timed to coincide with the publication of Dr Foster’s Hospital Guide for 2008. The guide found that there had been an overall improvement in hospital mortality around the country, although 20% of trusts still have higher than expected mortality rates.

It found that two primary care trusts had “significantly” higher rates of mastectomies than expected and that only a quarter of trusts screen for MRSA in pre-admission, despite a DH standard that by March 2009 all elective admissions should be screened.

Sheffield Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has won this year’s Dr Foster Trust of the year award by rating among the best performers across ten categories including hospital mortality and patient satisfaction.

Tim Kelsey, chair of the executive board of Dr Foster Intelligence, said the report showed many hospitals were doing well but that were still variations in care.

He added: “This presents a challenge to the NHS given the focus on quality in Lord Darzi’s review earlier this year. Of course, no single statistic tells the whole story of NHS care but we know that using a range of information will be instrumental in improving care for all.”

Last week, the DH officially announced that NHS Choices and NHS Direct had joined forces “to provide the public with all the information they need in one place.”

Health minister Ben Bradshaw, said: "By putting all our online health information on www.nhs.uk, the public will easily be able to find out the most suitable health options for them; from where to have their treatment to the best ways of keeping fit and healthy.”

Links

Drfosterhealth.co.uk

NHS Choices

Fiona Barr

Reader's Comments

Competing against yourself ...

bill.douglas@whis.nhs.uk

17 Nov 08 16:39

With the Dept. of Health not only owning NHS Choices but also having a £12m 50% stake in Dr. Foster, this slightly silly situation was pretty much bound to happen.

No problem at all with the range of data being available, but it all really should be in the same place.

Dr Foster aces out

19 Nov 08 08:43

I have just reviewed dr Foster.

Its much much faster brilliant layout and I love the simple comparison graphs, especially regional waiting lists.

As a pro -I am very impressed - its a much better presentation than the official NHS choices and much easier to use and read.

How much better? It's like Pluto compared to the Mars orbit -far out.

Excellent!

19 Nov 08 11:37

I agree with the previous poster. Dr Foster gives a much clearer, better thought-through experience than NHS choices. And it also looks a lot better. NHS choices will have to improve radically and quickly if they are not to lose out badly.

Cartoon dog vs chocolate

20 Nov 08 13:38

Pluto or Mars? Not sure about that one. That the DrFoster offering works better and is more visually appealing is at least in part due to being a slimmer, more focused product. One of the problems of the Choices site is the breadth of ambition and lack of focus. As usual, when you ask the DH the question 'What is this supposed to do, and for whom?' the answer is inevitabley, 'Everything, for everybody.'

The big question will be whether the material that DrF is focusing on is actually what the public is interested in. How many people outside of the kind of metropolican elite that run Dr Foster really want to shop round for their healthcare? I remain to be convinced.