Dr Foster Health celebrates 1,000,000th visitor.

Hospital comparison and consultant search website Dr Foster Health has welcomed its one millionth visitor as of January 9 2010.

An independent competitor of NHS Choices, Dr Foster Health was the first to publish hospital mortality rates (HSMRs), which are now used to help assess NHS hospital safety and quality.

Launched in November 2008, Dr Foster Health is free, requires no sign up and offers the most up-to-date quality assessments of all NHS hospitals using data collected and updated every year. The site also contains a database of nearly 40,000 private and NHS consultants searchable across a comprehensive range of medical specialties.

Dr Foster Health now publishes Quality Account Indicators (QAIs) for each NHS hospital to show how they are performing across measures of patient safety, clinical effectiveness and patient experience. Visitors can now find out their local hospital's patient safety score banding (one for the poorest performers and five for the best).

Dr Foster's Hospital Guide 2009 was published on the site in November 2009 and has since attracted many new users to search for their local hospital and compare it against the national picture. The report can be downloaded from the Dr Foster Health homepage and continues to provoke discussion among patients, clinicians, politicians, civil servants and hospital managers about safety and care quality across the NHS.

Tim Kelsey, Chairman of Dr Foster's Executive Board, said of the site traffic milestone: "Reaching a million visitors is a fantastic achievement and reinforces Dr Foster's belief that the public want and use the information we provide."