£10m NHS service comparison site to be announced

Tags: Choice Choose and Book Community DH GP GPs website

10 Apr 2007

An online comparison site which will enable NHS patients to compare different health services and shop around for a GP or dentist by seeing how satisfied local patients are with hospital and community services is set to be announced this week.

Health secretary Patricia Hewitt will tomorrow announce the £10m 'choice' website as part of the government's policy commitment to patient choice as a lever of NHS reform.

At the moment the mainstay of this policy is Choose and Book, for initial hospital referrals from their GP, but patients currently lack a reliable source of information on which to base their decisions. They also lack mechanisms for choosing between GPs and dentists – should these be taking on NHS patients.

According to an 8 April report in the Observer newspaper, "the £10m website will make it easier for patients to find out information about their local hospitals, click on the one they would like to go to, and send that information via the GP surgery through to the right medical team".

The paper also reports that the site will contain details of how different local services are rated in the patient satisfaction surveys the DH has mandated.

According to the Observer report when Hewitt launches the site on Wednesday, she will argue that far from benefiting the middle classes, the new technology is a 'weapon against inequality'. It says the 'Choice' website is intended to help create 'one big marketplace' within the NHS as patients increasingly want to have a bigger influence on their care.

The scheme will be piloted in 10 of the poorer areas of the country, but if successful will be rolled out across the rest of England this summer.

Research has shown that while many patients value being offered a choice of hospitals the majority offered such a choice opt for their local hospital.

Information to be provided on the £10m new website is said to include details on different NHS trusts including national ratings by the Healthcare Commission, the distance to their home, car parking facilities and the waiting times for surgery.

Prospective patients will also be able to look at the results of patients' surveys, which broadly show the satisfaction rates for different hospitals. Patients will also be able to find out about particular treatments or operations, waiting times and access data on MRSA rates and hygiene scores.

To date the roll-out of Choose and Book has been slow and missed deadlines set nationally. Despite incentive payments to GPs for the programme to be 90% implemented by 31 March it actually achieved 38% usage.

Reader's Comments

why bother?

10 Apr 07 12:04

Like its possible to get registered at an NHS Dentist anyway.

Recurring political fallacy

10 Apr 07 13:04

The explicit trend towards consumer driven healthcare loads advantage onto a demographic already best placed to exploit finite NHS resources.

All UK governments of recent decades have worked to a fantasy model of healthcare dominated by delivery to people who fulfil the following criteria

1. Need care only between 9AM to 5PM Monday to Friday excluding Bank Holidays

2. Are seen by appointment

3. Have a single medical condition curable by a single procedure

4. Have both the capacity and peace of mind to exercise choice and control over their treatment

This defines a demographic into which most politicians fall most of the time. It also defines the only services the UK private sector can provide economically. Let's call these coincidences.

Sadly they do not coincide with treatment of emergencies, those with multiple or on-going conditions, most children, many elderly and some with mental health issues. Collectively and appropriately these groups constitute the great majority of NHS 'business'.

I believe a large part of healthcare is inescapably paternalistic: the consumer model does not fit! Healthcare depends on the professional guiding patients towards correct and socially responsible choices if not actually making them on their behalf.

Those patients least able to exercise choice must get access to the resources they need. As a 'lever' for reform Patricia Hewitt's web site can only contribute to precisely the opposite. The opportunity cost of £10 million is the least of the problem.

Dr Malcolm H Duncan

Medical Object Oriented Software

A logistically challenging plan

jean@hcjean.demon.co.uk

10 Apr 07 17:04

Banks keep your personal account situation up to date by updating overnight everynight at the least. The load that changing circumstances in hospitals and Treatment Centres will put on the NHS solutions will be immense, because patients will not want to make decisions based on last weeks availability or last month's performance. In addition as more care is to be delivered closer to home, perhaps by GPs and minor injury units, and perhaps in conjunction with social welfare services and private providers, are their performances also going to be directly available. Will the NHS directly advertise private facilities with which they have commissioning contracts; or provide links to the private providers own websites I wonder?? Seems a considerable load on an infrastructure that has yet to demonstrate it can cope with the transaction volume that will come from NHSCFH functions, such as e-prescription transfer and C&B when they are all operating at full bore.

Re: Recurring political fallacy

nhstechie@btinternet.com

11 Apr 07 00:04

You missed - 5. access to a car and enough money to pay for vastly inflated car parking fees. Many of the people who really need the NHS simply don't fit into this category and it can take a whole day travelling just 40 miles to and from an alternative hospital by public transport.

Headlines

12 Apr 07 21:04

You have to admire a person so out of their depth in their job, so far removed from what patients want, so lacking in understanding of their business, so lacking any inspiration or leadership qualities, so full of ... yet somehow is allowed to waste £10m on taxpayers cash so that 3 people in Notting Hill can review some sanitised information and make an informed choice not to go their local NHS Trust. Can all the people who voted for this government and particularly this Health Secretary please write 100 lines and promise never to do this again.