Dr Foster

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For the nursery rhyme, see Doctor Foster.

Dr Foster LLP is a commercial provider of healthcare information based in the UK. Dr Foster was launched in 2001 with its core work originally being the publication of guides to healthcare services in the UK and then more recently the provision of information tools.

Dr Foster Intelligence is a public-private partnership joint venture between Dr Foster Holdings LLP and the Information Centre (a special health authority of the National Health Service) that aims to improve the quality and efficiency of health and social care through better use of information. It was formed in February 2006 and works currently with most of the organisations in the NHS providing various products and services.

The chairman is Tim Kelsey, CEO is Jake Arnold-Forster and COO is John Pendlebury-Green.


[edit] Connection with Information Centre

For some time there has been concern regarding the relationship between Dr Foster and the NHS, and anti-fraud investigators are looking at one local government contract [1]

The Health Service Journal stated that the Dr Foster web deal allegedly 'violated probity'. [2]

According to the Financial Times of 15 January 2008, it was alleged in an affidavit lodged at Leeds employment tribunal that the Department of Health had made a "scapegoat" of top statistician Denise Lievesley who raised the alarm with senior officials about the Dr Foster venture. Professor Lievesley lost her case at the industrial tribunal in February 2008 [3]

Prof Lievesley was former chief executive of the Information Centre. She said she had consistently highlighted concerns about the joint venture's worth and its handling of information. He claims follow questions raised about the joint venture which a committee of MPs last year said had been set up in a "backroom deal" at a cost of £12m to the taxpayer.

The NHS Choices contract was awarded to Dr Foster in 2007.

The negotiations happened in early 2007, just as the committee was conducting its inquiry into the Dr Foster Intelligence joint venture. Professor Lievesley said: "I was again concerned about the failure to adhere to proper procurement processes in relation to this contract and expressed my disagreement to the information centre's sponsor in the DH."

She said although she was told that information from the Information Centre would not be used by NHS Choices, a prototype in May 2007 did contain the centre's hospital episode statistics.

Professor Lievesley wrote to the NHS chief executive David Nicholson on 6 June outlining her concerns, which included the delivery of patient-identifiable data to bodies outside the NHS.

Dr Foster said its data were of a high standard and did not mislead the public. The company said: "We understand [Prof Lievesley] is in dispute with her former employers but do not know the details. We have not seen this affidavit, but we refute the criticisms that appear to have been made."

The Dr Foster deal first came under fire in a National Audit Office report in February last year, which rebuked the health department for failing to follow a proper tendering process and for paying too much for its half of the joint venture.

In July the Commons public accounts committee unveiled a stinging report on the deal, in which the Information Centre paid £7.6m to Dr Foster LLP and sank another £4.4m into the joint venture company.

Prof Lievesley had gone to the employment tribunal to try to revoke a confidential deal under which she received a pay-off in exchange for her silence about the circumstances surrounding her departure from the Information Centre in July.

She said the agreement was unfair as the health department failed to point out in public that her exit was unconnected with the criticism of the Dr Foster deal made in the Commons public accounts committee report a few weeks later.

Her affidavit said: "It is ironic that my reputation should have been sullied when I was actually trying to promote the principles of proper and ethical access to information." Judge Colin Grazin who ruled on the case struck out the case.

[edit] External links

Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 27 June 2007