Hospitals will be required to publish a range of data on outcomes, from surgeons’ death rates and infection levels to patients’ ratings of whether staff were compassionate, under changes included in the final report of Ara Darzi’s review of the NHS this week. These data would in part affect the amount of funding given to healthcare providers.

The long awaited report from the health minister Lord Darzi did not set any new national targets or herald any substantial reorganisation for the NHS but instead emphasised the need to improve quality of care after a decade of investment in services. Lord Darzi said that providers would have to publish quality indictors so that patients could choose where, when, and how to be treated in the NHS.

For the first time, patients’ own detailed views on their treatment will be collected and published, alongside more objective measures of safety and clinical outcomes. Data will be available on NHS websites but will also be displayed in hospitals and general practices—for example, information on length of stay and how soon patients are seen.

Lord Darzi said, …