Our investigation shows a third of NHS trusts using Palantir’s FDP tools are seeing fewer operations than before they started using it
Almost a third (30%) of English hospital trusts using US spy tech firm Palantir’s Federated Data Platform (FDP) tool are carrying out fewer patient operations than before they started using it, according to data obtained from the National Health Service (NHS).
The UK government and Palantir have repeatedly credited the tool with increasing the overall number of procedures carried out in hospitals, but have until now refused to publish any data beyond a single “FDP uptakes and benefits” page. This page claims various performance metric improvements, but does not provide any of the data behind the claims, such as a breakdown of the performance of individual trusts which have adopted Palantir’s tools.
New NHS data, obtained by Foxglove via Freedom of Information requests, says 41 NHS trusts are using Inpatient CCS, Palantir’s FDP module for helping hospitals to manage scheduling patient operations. Out of those 41, 13 (about 30%) report they have carried out fewer operations overall than they did before they started using the FDP tool.
Between them, those 13 trusts counted 9,073 fewer operations taking place after adopting Inpatient CCS, compared to the same period before adoption.
This is the first time that data revealing whether individual trusts using FDP have actually increased or decreased the number of operations they are carrying out has been made publicly available.
Previously, NHS England chose to only publish the total cumulative number of additional operations at trusts using FDP. This has now been revealed as potentially misleading, because it concealed the fact that performance was worsening at a substantial number of trusts which had adopted the tool.
Foxglove has pointed out before that attributing performance metric increases at hospitals to the use of FDP, but withholding the critical information to prove it, prevents the public and parliamentarians from effectively scrutinising the platform’s performance. Notably, NHSE has failed to publish comparative data for trusts which have not adopted Palantir’s tools, making it impossible to assess whether improvements in performance can be attributed to the firm’s technologies.
Elsewhere in Government, questions have been raised over the value for money of Palantir’s services. Civil servants recently chose to take a multi-million-pound Palantir contract for housing Ukrainian refugees in-house, in a move they say is “already saving MHCLG millions of pounds a year in running costs.”
Foxglove Head of Strategy Tim Squirrell said: “Foxglove’s investigation has shown that the flagship claim made by NHS England and Palantir about the benefits to hospitals of the Federated Data Platform needs a serious health warning.
“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.
“To date, both ministers and Palantir have failed to provide the information we all need to decide whether the FDP is really helping or not. We shouldn’t have to go through a series of time-consuming FOI requests to access the crucial information that allows us to work out if this tool is truly delivering for the NHS or not.
“As it stands, 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 effectively being asked to back Palantir’s FDP is delivering the goods based on faith, rather than hard evidence.
“Palantir’s contract costs the NHS more than three hundred million pounds. Ministers may want to consider whether NHS patients across England will agree that this ropey evidence is enough to justify giving this US tech giant another massive contract in one of our most important public services.”
Notes to Editors
The full table laying out the trust-by-trust operations numbers for trusts using the FDP Inpatient CSS tool is available to reporters on request.
Please note the data provided to Foxglove by NHS England on June 2 regarding the FDP Inpatient tool is slightly different to the data published on the NHS FDP uptakes and benefits page. We’re attributing this to the data sent to us directly by NHSE being more up to date than the public page, but are happy for reporters to clarify that directly with NHSE themselves.