National Health Executive writes in England private providers of healthcare services must submit new information to help patients choose where to get treatment, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has said. The CMA carried out an investigation into private healthcare in 2014, leading to the appointment of the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), which will publish information on private hospitals and consultants. With over 500 hospitals treating patients privately, including private hospitals and NHS private units, these will now have to submit data to PHIN, which will use them to develop performance measures for private healthcare.
PHIN will begin publishing ratings of private healthcare providers from 30 April 2017, as well as information about their prices. The measures will include mortality and infection rates, the number of patients readmitted to hospital or transferred to an NHS hospital following surgery, patient satisfaction and health improvement following treatment.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has said that NHS England should collect more data on independent providers of NHS services and subject them to the same requirements as NHS providers.