Can NHS Websites Still Offer Value For Money?

A recently leaked government report evaluating the effectiveness of NHS websites has concluded that the majority of the websites in the survey – with development costs over £86m per year – were difficult to find, badly designed and irrelevant to patient needs.

It found that only half of the websites provided email addresses, believing that “vulnerable members of the public are often not being properly catered for”. The report highlighted that GP’s websites were of particular concern due to the inadequate service that many were offering, and furthermore websites provided by primary care trusts and health authorities were facing questions as to why they had originally been developed.

This damning report of the NHS and it’s online presence is only one of a few similar stories that have made the news over the recent months.

In the grip of a tight recession and with a new government in place, reviews of current public spending are being issued and questions raised. One review found that 46 government websites recently built had cost £94 million and the Business Link website has received a considerable amount of negative press when it was found to of cost £35 million a year to build and operate, resulting in a cost of £2.15 per visit.

Understandably debates have opened up regarding the spend of public money on government owned websites. Many are asking how useful are the sites being developed and how much value for money are they offering? Others are also querying whether it is always necessary in these sectors to pass online projects to large suppliers, who may be more established but are significantly more expensive too?

I wholeheartedly agree that strategies should be routinely reviewed, so as to guarantee that the general public are receiving a service that both meets their needs and is delivered in a cost effective manner.

I also support the notion however, that it is possible to create websites for the NHS as a smaller supplier and create a solution that is both cost effective and meets the needs of the wider community.

Our experience with the NHS

NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale Primary Care Trust (NHS HMR) were looking for an innovative way of communicating and engaging with their community and approached us for a solution.

We believed developing websites that enabled a closer collaboration between health providers, councils and local partners could become an essential part of delivering a better service, as well as achieving true cost savings. With this in mind we developed several new websites.

One of these websites was Speak Up Now, a new eConsultation website. The website was designed to create a platform for the local community to voice their opinions on the health services in their area. Equally as important, was a resource where the Trust and other borough partners could engage in the communication process and share this vital information.

The Speak up Now website consequently pooled resources and enabled a closer collaboration between borough partners, ensuring the complete database of engagement information was available – at the touch of a button. Not only did this provide greater accessibility for partners, but significant cost savings were also made due to the elimination of duplication of engagements being delivered independently by each different partner.

Healthcare prevention and early intervention was and still remains a main priority for HMR as in Rochdale, on average, a person’s life expectancy is about 2.4 years less than most other people in England and Wales. Locally, one quarter of children aged between four and five years old are overweight or obese; 28 per cent of adults in the area smoke and 22 per cent of people binge drink.

Therefore we were looking  to communicate these vital health messages but in a different and engaging way, and so built a site called Do You Feel Good? The site presents the range of services and activities available to those living in the Rochdale Borough, and provides information on a range of topics such as healthy eating and losing weight.

Features on the site include the ‘Smoking Pinwheel’ which reveals how much money can be saved by quitting smoking and the ‘Drink Calculator’ which helps calculate how many units are drunk a week.

The final part of the brief was to update the Primary Care Trust’s main website, www.hmr.nhs.uk.  It was essential that we created a medium that made it easy for people to access the healthcare information they needed. A user friendly interface was used and features added which included the search tool that gave patients the ability to search for their nearest doctor, dentist or pharmacy by their postcode.

Our Thoughts

From our point of view and from the feedback we have received from the Trust and members of the public, there is still a place for engaging health resources in the wider community. These websites need not however cost vast amounts of money, and the NHS and the website developers have an obligation to build websites that are accessible and easy to use for all members of the public.

Working on a project designed to improve health services in our locality was both important and satisfying, and the award obtained by Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale PCT for ‘outstanding team’  at the National NHS Communications Awards substantiates our belief that smaller agencies can deliver on such high profile projects, and we would hope that other regional agencies are offered the same opportunities in times ahead.