PUBLIC SECTOR

Campaign group says FOI figures show some trusts carried out fewer procedures than before

Nearly a third of NHS trusts using Palantir's health data platform are performing fewer patient procedures than before it went live, according to figures analyzed by campaign group Foxglove.

The research – based on a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests – also found that a single body, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, accounted for 84 percent of the fall in outpatient waiting lists, while 16 trusts use the tool provided by the US firm.

Palantir won the £330 million contract to provide the NHS Federated Data Platform (FDP), which the UK government said was vital to improving NHS productivity and recovering from the long waiting lists for elective care caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Palantir's journey with the NHS began with a £1 award in 2020, which later led to a total of £60 million in contracts awarded without competition during the pandemic.

NHS England, which awarded the contracts, said that as of June, 139 trusts used the FDP, with 137 reporting benefits. An Inpatients Care Co-ordination Solution (CCS) tool based on the platform had resulted in 111,589 additional patients undergoing procedures in operating theatres, it said.

However, data obtained by tech rights campaign group Foxglove found that 41 NHS trusts are using Inpatient CCS, the module for helping hospitals manage operation scheduling, but 13 of them – or about 30 percent – report having carried out fewer operations overall since using the tool.

Staffing shortages, more complex cases, or pressure on hospital bed capacity might explain the fall.

Foxglove said it was the first time that data from individual trusts using FDP had been made publicly available.

The FOI response also shows that, for the Outpatient CCS, a single trust accounted for the vast majority of the benefits. According to NHS figures, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust accounted for 183,061 of the patients removed from the outpatient waiting list, compared with the total of 217,846.

Foxglove head of strategy Tim Squirrell said: "We now know that the big claim the FDP is delivering more operations for hospitals across the NHS is covering up a much less positive reality – a third of the trusts using the FDP's operations scheduling tool, Inpatient CCS, are actually delivering fewer operations than before they started using Palantir's kit.

"Palantir can't have it both ways. If it expects us to believe that the FDP is responsible for improvements in some hospitals, it must also accept that things are getting worse as a result of its tools in others.

"The data the NHS has seen fit to publish provides no useful comparisons of how things are going at the trusts not using Palantir's tools. So, in effect, we are being asked to back Palantir's FDP is delivering the goods based on faith, rather than hard evidence."

An NHS spokesperson said: "Thousands more patients are benefiting from the NHS Federated Data Platform every month, with more than 110,000 extra patients having undergone procedures in operating theatres, while also reducing the number of unnecessary days patients stay in hospital following treatment by a seventh.

"As NHS organizations expand the use of this technology, we will continue to work with them to ensure they use it to its full extent and get the most out of it for patients."

An official pointed out that trusts have different starting points, at different scales, through locally agreed rollout plans when using the FDP.

In a statement to The Financial Times, Stephen Childs, head of UK health partnerships at Palantir, said the company was working to improve by applying lessons from the trusts that get the best results from its software.

"But we should be clear that the recent history of technology in the NHS has, by the government's own admission, seen us fall behind, exacerbated by various failed programmes, often at great expense to the taxpayer," he said.

"And what these figures show, despite attempts by the campaign group that obtained them to present them otherwise, is that Palantir software is helping to fix this and enable the NHS to deliver better patient care.

"This includes more than 110,000 additional operations to date, a 15 percent reduction in discharge delays for long-stay patients, and a 6.8 percent increase in the number of patients finding out whether they have cancer within 28 days of referral."

The FDP deal has been the subject of frequent criticism in recent months.

Earlier in June, MPs told the government to reduce reliance on the US spy-tech firm, and specifically use a break clause in the FDP contract to end its involvement in the NHS. Instead, the government should "develop an in-house replacement or seek an alternative developed by UK-owned and UK-based providers that are more compatible with UK values, and do not pursue either technical or contractual dependencies," the House of Commons science committee said. ®