NHS Choices criticised over duff information

Tags: GP GPs Mental Health NHS Choices website

03 Jul 2007

The Department of Health’s new flagship website NHS Choices contains GP practice information which in some cases is at much as six years out-of-date, EHI Primary Care has learnt.

Doctors claim the new multi-million pound site, developed by Dr Foster Intelligence together with LBi and Sapient, contains incorrect information on GP surgeries including inaccurate opening hours, out-of-date information about partners and errors on practice staff and clinic timings.

At the same time listings of primary care trusts, mental health trusts and strategic health authorities have become much more difficult to find compared with the old nhs.uk site, according to NHS staff.

The new chairman of the BMA, east Yorkshire GP Dr Hamish Meldrum, this week also criticised the site’s ‘health profile calculator’ which enables individuals to identify the top five conditions they would be most likely to be hospitalised for by putting in their sex, gender and postcode. He told the BBC such general information would not help people but may cause information overload for patients and create additional anxiety.

He added: “ We all share the desire for patients and the public to be as well informed as possible but this is gimmicky and over simplistic and may cause unnecessary worries.”

Dr Trefor Roscoe, a GP in Sheffield, said the public were in danger of being “grossly misled” by the information on GP surgeries on the site. He told EHI primary Care: “According to the site we still open on Saturday morning which we last did about six years ago.”

A check on the information contained on ten surgeries around the country by EHI Primary Care discovered that at least a third contained errors such as out-of-date opening times or partner listings.

Dr Mary Hawking, a GP in Bedfordshire, said she had complained about inaccurate information on the old nhs.uk site and that although she felt the new NHS Choices site provided some additional information there were errors, including a map of her home town which she claims is at least six years out-of-date.

She added: “The information on GPs is still inaccurate: it doesn't list clinics, opening hours are inaccurate, most have no facilities or clinics listed, and the list of staff is grossly out of date: in other words I suspect this was taken, unchecked, from NHS England UK.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health told EHI Primary Care that if GPs discovered that their practice's data on NHS Choices was out-of-date they should contact the web editor at their primary care trust or telephone NHS Choices on 0845 4023089.

Reader's Comments

Open all hours

alan.ferris@gp-e82027.nhs.uk

03 Jul 07 16:07

They claim my surgery closes on a Tuesday from 10.45 until 2pm. Possibly true, but not since at least 1985, when I first started here....

Poorly Designed website

03 Jul 07 17:07

I personally feel that the website itself, it poorly designed, a website which acts as a portal should be structured to enhance intuitive browsing. I think the old layout of the website was more user-friendly. I am not prone to NHS “bashing” but I felt as a user of this website I was unhappy with this update. I’d like to hear what other users of this site think.

Poor management

03 Jul 07 20:07

A few years ago us web editors in PCTs were supported by nhs.uk in the difficult task of keeping all the services data up to date. This support vanished about 2 years ago and we now hear nothing from the central team - not surprising the data insn't up to date anymore. What happened to our support?

search is misleading too

04 Jul 07 10:07

Searching on the new website is poor too. I don't want patients thinking they've got DVT when they search for varicose veins, or AMI when they search for heart failure.

Statement on NHS Choices

06 Jul 07 11:07

The purpose of NHS Choices is to provide information that can be used by members of the public and health professionals to make informed decisions about health treatments and choice of hospital. It is therefore important that the data relating to primary and secondary care services is as accurate as possible at all times.

The NHS Choices delivery team has made strenuous efforts to ensure that only the most up-to-date data appears on the site. It has been working closely with The Information Centre for health and social care (The IC) over the last three months to help PCTs with the checking and validation of this data that comprises over 40,000 organisations and over one million pieces of information.

In the last three months, the IC has taken the following steps to ensure data integrity: • Made over 8,500 calls to healthcare organisations • Carried out over 2,000 spot checks on the data • Run cross checks against General Medical Council and General Dental Council datasets, and also against each and every postcode and address • Undertaken comparisons with third party directories • Conducted “mystery shopping” exercises, to identify errors and duplicate entries

Some data items - such as opening times of surgeries - by their nature change frequently and therefore require constant updating. It is ultimately the responsibility of PCTs to ensure that the data on GP practices, pharmacies, opticians and dentists in NHS Choices is accurate.

However, in order to help ensure that data changes are made as quickly as possible, a provider helpdesk has been set up to receive and enact requests for amendments. This can be contacted as follows at provider@nhschoices.nhs.uk or 0845 6504 865

But what about the usbility?

07 Jul 07 12:07

Its all very well knockin these guys for the data quality, what about the lovvie design which fails so many usability tests?

The data will only get corrected once all 40,000 organisations get their own summary data corrected - a job for the shrunken and demoralised SHA/PCTs perhaps, a bit like getting staff recrods up to date between NHS HR, Payroll and pensions, if you get my drift.

The question really is was result of the data quality assessment sufficiently positive for someone to put their career on the line and put a name to the decision to launch.... (by the way - it wasnt me).

This will at least focus the minds on who to blame for poor data quality.