KPMG to provide digital strategy for NHS

Tags: DH Helpline NHS Choices NHS Direct reporting website

03 Aug 2009

The Department of Health has commissioned management consultants KPMG to report on a vision for a digital strategy for the NHS.

The review, being run separately to the £12.7 billion NHS IT programme, includes a review of the future roles of the health helpline NHS Direct and the DH’s flagship website NHS Choices.

The relationship between the two agencies has already been the subject of internal DH wrangling with NHS Direct’s online activities last year transferred to NHS Choices.

E-Health Insider understands that KPMG have brought in information specialist Dr Foster, the firm until late 2008 ran NHS Choices on behalf of the DH, to help carry out the review.

After losing out to Capita on an £80m procurement to run NHS Choices last autumn, Dr Foster last November set up a rival portal.

A Department of Health spokesperson told EHI: “It is only right that in a digital age we are constantly looking at ways to enhance the work of the Department. That is why KPMG have been commissioned to do this and will be reporting to the Department of Health shortly.”

Nick Chapman, NHS Direct chief executive, told NHS Direct’s June board meeting that NHS Direct had been “fully engaged” with KPMG and Dr Foster to provide input to the development of a vision for a digital strategy for the NHS and said staff had attended workshops and meetings to input to the review.

Chapman said the KPMG report would look at the roles of NHS Direct and NHS Choices and the organisational forms that should be adopted.

Last year the DH over-hauled the way information is provided to the public by NHS Choices and NHS Direct by migrating NHS Direct’s online health content to NHS Choices. The NHS Direct website retained its self-help guide and enquiry service as well as recent developments including self-assessment tools and a web chat service.

The involvement of information specialists Dr Foster in the review may raise some eyebrows as it was one of the losing bidders when the DH won an £80m procurement process for NHS Choices, which was eventually won by Capita.

In a parliamentary report written answer last month health minister Phil Hope revealed that KPMG has been more than £30m by the DH over the last five years for services including finance, tax and audit as well as management consultancy including almost £5m by the end of June this year.

Mark Britnell, former NHS director general for commissioning and system management, announced in June that he was leaving the NHS to work for KPMG and former head of Connecting for Health Richard Granger also left the NHS to work for KPMG in Australia in 2008.

Fiona Barr

Reader's Comments

great

03 Aug 09 10:08

Here we go again.......

A joke's a joke.

03 Aug 09 10:08

I nearly fell of my chair laughing at this one. The DH were expected to publish a 'digital review' in the spring. Then it was delayed. Now KPMG is going to do it. What does this say about the DH's capacity to formulate policy and strategy?

Since the web emerged as a potent new medium in the late 90s the DH have failed to develop any kind of coherent strategy regarding its application in the NHS, let alone one covering the other emerging new media channels. But to commission organisations with a clear vested interest to come up with a strategy. Now that really is comic genius.

Remind me

04 Aug 09 08:08

Isn't there some historical link between iSoft and KPMG ?

Poachers and gamekeepers

04 Aug 09 09:08

Is it not possible that a thwarted previous service provider is not going to be scrupulously unbiased in evaluating the service provided by another??

Were interests 'declared' in the bid for this work? Is there really no other competent assessment agency to look at the services / overlaps and gaps - might not one (or more) of the longstanding academic institutions involved in health data analysis not be more objective if no commercial is without 'links' or 'history'?

Hang on a minute ...

04 Aug 09 12:08

Aside from the validity of poster number 4's comments, didn't the DH pay £12m for half ownership of Dr. Foster a couple of years ago? ... which the Commons Public Accounts Committee called a 'back room deal' and said of the DH "... the £12m that it paid, £7.6m of which went straight into the pockets of Dr Foster’s shareholders, was between a half and a third higher than its financial advisers’ evaluation."

Jobs for the boys

07 Aug 09 11:08

I'm sure there are plenty of talented, more independent organisations who could carry out this review. Why is it not being carried out by DH itself?

Why not the DH?

07 Aug 09 17:08

Because it's always better if you give your watch to a management consultant to tell you the time....

KPMG

gerard@careprovider.com

08 Aug 09 13:08

If my memory servers me right KPMG was key in the design of Fundholding Software and accounting. You may not have liked fundholding because it was not universal, but it was damn site cleverer and more useful the practice based commissioing. It was clever because it counted was was DONE. Funny that clinical data became accurate once £ was attached. The double entry bookkeeping of budgets at practice level was brilliant. OK this could now be at PBC level and make it all procedures, not the limited activity Fundholding. All KPMG need do is dig out their stuff of 1990-1992 vintage and they have a new report! If PBC groups had budgets with fundholding software we could scrap PCTs. That would be progress.