PHIN publishes 2016-17 Annual Report

Today the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) has published its Annual Report for the financial year 2016-17. The report provides an update on the availability and quality of clinical healthcare data submitted by hospitals, along with an update on publishing performance measures to support patients considering their private healthcare options.

The report highlights the important progress made by PHIN and private hospitals, with the first performance measures required for publication by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) going live in 2017.

However, over a year since the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order came into force, over 150 hospital sites are still not submitting data to PHIN. Additionally, much of the data submitted thus far is not sufficiently detailed or complete to support publication of the more challenging performance measures. As a consequence, measures indicating risk of harm and also health improvement have been delayed until 2018. PHIN also took the decision to postpone the publication of measures for individual consultants until next year, giving hospitals more time to improve data quality.

The Annual Report also sets out PHIN’s key priorities for the coming year, as we look to expedite publication of further hospital performance measures, working with those hospitals most committed to providing data which evidences the quality of their services. We will work closer with professional associations and individual consultants to publish fair and accurate performance measures for consultants’ practice. Given the delay in publishing some of the performance measures, PHIN has also committed to publish a status report of the data received from each provider, and its ability to support publication.