£10m NHS service comparison site to be announced

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.