NHS hospitals admit to errors in data used to defend Palantir contract

Hospital trusts have admitted there are a litany of errors in the data behind one of NHS England’s headline claims about the benefits of Palantir’s technology after an FT investigation identified irregularities.

NHS England has claimed that hospitals have seen a 15 per cent decline in delays to discharging hospital patients after adopting a tool built using the US company’s software.

However, four trusts confirmed there are errors in the underlying hospital data after an analysis by the FT found they had reported a sudden drop in discharge delays from hundreds or thousands to zero before increasing again sharply — a scenario that would be highly improbable.

The errors cast doubt on NHSE’s headline claim about the overall fall in discharge delays, a figure widely cited as evidence of the success of Palantir’s Federated Data Platform, which aims to bring together disparate data in order to boost efficiency in the health service.

Palantir’s role has become an increasing source of controversy, given its ties to the US defence sector.

The evidence for the impact of the FDP on discharge delays looks “increasingly flimsy”, said Charles Tallack, former head of operational research and evaluation at NHS England.

“The delayed discharge dataset may be suitable for day-to-day management purposes, but not for evaluation,” he said.

The benefits data is calculated using NHSE’s national, mandatory dataset, which tracks performance on discharge delays across all trusts and of which Palantir has no oversight. The NHS England website itself acknowledges the limitations of the data, noting there are only “minimal” quality checks.

Across the full four years of acute discharge data, the FT identified irregularities for 42 per cent of all NHS hospital trusts.

The findings come a few weeks after the UK statistics regulator launched an investigation into key claims about the FDP after the FT revealed NHS England had added a caveat to several figures, admitting the data did not prove the technology’s effectiveness.

A spokesperson for the Office for Statistics Regulation said it was “currently reviewing the issues raised in the article”.

On Thursday, MPs on the cross-party health select committee wrote to ministers to raise concerns over the doubts surrounding the platform’s performance and urged the UK government to break the NHS contract with Palantir next spring by using a clause in the original contract.

NHS officials have spoken of the pressure to demonstrate the benefits of using the FDP too quickly. NHS trusts “are being asked to put their name to statements about improvements before the tools are fully embedded and before the evaluations are done”, one said.

The FT has previously reported that a number of improvements in NHS performance attributed to Palantir have been driven by just a handful of hospitals, while some trusts have delivered fewer operations since adopting the technology.

Health analysts have repeatedly called for more robust evidence that quantifies the direct impact of the FDP and takes into account the improvements that might have occurred even without its use.

Appearing before Parliament’s health and social care committee on Wednesday, NHS England chief executive Sir Jim Mackey said he had personally challenged whether assessments of the platform’s benefits “have been objective and can be fully stood up if challenged”.

He added that an “objective” review “would be helpful and necessary”, but cautioned that it would take months to carry out.

MPs, NHS staff and medical trade unions have urged the health service to find an alternative ahead of a decision to extend the contract next spring.

In one of his final acts as UK health secretary, Wes Streeting ordered an internal review before his successor decides whether or not to break the contract.

A spokesperson for NHS England said: “These statistics come from nationally collected NHS operational data which is regularly reviewed and updated to maintain data quality — and an independent evaluation of [Palantir’s] Optica tool also found it is freeing up more time for staff and reducing unnecessary days patients spend in hospital following treatment.”