Dr. Foster Health Celebrates 1,000,000th Visitor

January 13, 2010 - Launched in November 2008, hospital comparison and consultant search website Dr Foster Health (www.drfosterhealth.co.uk) will welcome its 1,000,000th visitor on January 9 2010.

An independent competitor of NHS Choices, Dr Foster Health was the first to publish hospital mortality rates (HSMRs), which are now used to help assess NHS hospital safety and quality.

Dr Foster Health is free, requires no sign-up and offers the most up-to-date assessments of all NHS hospitals using data collected and updated every year. The site also contains a database of nearly 40,000 private and NHS consultants searchable across a comprehensive range of medical specialties.

Dr Foster Health now publishes Quality Accounts (www.drfosterhealth.co.uk/quality-accounts) for each NHS hospital to show how they are performing across measures of patient safety, clinical effectiveness and patient experience. Visitors can find out their local hospital's patient safety score banding (one for the poorest performers and five for the best).

Dr Foster's Hospital Guide 2009, which can be downloaded from the Dr Foster Health homepage (http://www.drfosterhealth.co.uk/docs/hospital-guide-2009.pdf), continues to provoke discussion among patients, clinicians, politicians, civil servants and hospital managers about safety and care quality.

Tim Kelsey, Chairman of Dr Foster's Executive Board, said of the website traffic milestone: "Reaching a million visitors is a fantastic achievement and reinforces Dr Foster's belief that the public want and use the information we provide."

Dr Foster aims to improve the quality and efficiency of health and social care and other public services through better use of information.

The Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine has developed pioneering statistical methodologies that enable fast, accurate identification of potential problems in clinical performance and areas of high achievement in healthcare systems.

Dr Foster was founded on the belief that only through better information and better measurement could hospital performance be improved and variations in performance reduced.


Notes to editors:

1) Dr Foster (www.drfosterintelligence.co.uk) is the leading innovator in benchmarking public services and communicating information about these services to the public. Dr Foster's aim is not only to inform, but also to act as a catalyst for change.

2) Dr Foster Health publishes authoritative and independent guides to health services in the public and private healthcare sectors:

· The Hospital Guide allows the public, healthcare professionals, commissioners and civil servants to access independent and impartial data about each NHS Trust and find out how well local hospitals are performing

· The Consultant Guide provides the public with a database of nearly 40,000 private and NHS hospital consultants, which can be searched by medical specialty, location and hospital

3) Every year, Dr Foster publishes the Hospital Guide – an independent report that examines the quality and safety of NHS hospitals. Download the Hospital Guide 2009 (PDF 2MB) or visit the Dr Foster Health homepage to find out more.

4) Dr Foster Health's Quality Account for every English NHS Trust reveals how well local hospitals are performing across measures of patient safety, clinical effectiveness and patient experience.