Improving transparency and performance of private hospitals

The recent report of the Paterson Inquiry identified multiple levels of dysfunction across England’s health system. These allowed surgeon Ian Paterson to practise unchecked for many years, causing serious harm to thousands of patients.1 Among the less surprising of the failings is the lack of transparency in reporting activity and outcomes by the private hospitals where he worked. As the report notes, transparency is no panacea, but it is essential for protecting patients from harm. Urgent action is now needed to improve reporting by independent sector providers to bring them in line with standards in the NHS.

These concerns are long standing and motivated the publication of the Competition and Markets Authority’s private healthcare market investigation order 2014, which required independent providers to publicly report 11 performance metrics at both hospital and consultant level (table 1).2 Subsequently, responsibility for collecting and reporting these data passed to the Private Healthcare Information Network.