The Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) has published a summary of data reporting by private healthcare providers to support the publication of performance measures required under the Competition & Markets Authority’s Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014.
All providers of private healthcare in the UK, including independent hospitals and NHS Private Patient Units, are required by the competition regulator to provide comprehensive data on activity, safety and care outcomes to PHIN as the approved publisher. PHIN has committed to supporting transparency by publishing progress on data reporting from private hospitals.
The report published by PHIN today shows:
- PHIN now publishes the number of procedures undertaken and other basic measures for 382 hospitals providing private healthcare across the UK, including many NHS hospitals, collectively providing an estimated 96% of private healthcare activity.
- 89 hospitals, collectively accounting for a third of private healthcare activity in the UK, have now submitted sufficiently complete and detailed data to support the publication of the first adverse events (patient safety) measures. In addition, 68 hospitals have submitted sufficient data to support the publication of the first measures of health improvement (Patient Reported Outcome Measures or “PROMs”).
- However, a total of 483 hospitals have not yet submitted sufficiently complete and valid data for PHIN to publish a robust view of their adverse events for patients, of which 228 hospitals have made little or no progress in submitting data to support adverse events information for patients.
The report, available on PHIN’s website, provides a view of progress, broken down by each provider and individual site, and outlines the areas where data is either incomplete or not of sufficient detail to support publication of the required measures. This is a live report which will be kept updated as further progress is made.
PHIN intends to begin publishing the first adverse events measures (“Never Events” and reportable infections), and patient-reported outcome measures for hip and knee operations, this autumn.
Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen, Chair of PHIN, said:
“PHIN is committed to providing patients with clear and helpful information about the quality of healthcare services. Over the last year, we have seen noticeable improvements in the quality of data we have received from hospitals, and we are pleased that there is now a critical mass of hospitals for which we can begin publishing the first adverse events and health improvement measures. It is our priority to make this available to patients on our website this autumn.
“However, it has taken a frustratingly long time to reach this point. There are still too many hospitals that are not providing reassurance over the quality of services that they deliver to patients.
“Complete, valid and accurate information is crucial for helping patients make informed choices about their care. Where this transparency is not available, patients should rightly raise questions about the care provided.”
Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen
*Statistics correct as of 8am 30/05/2019.
