The Private Healthcare Information Network’s new services provide greater transparency around activities in the private sector.
The Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) has launched benchmarking services for its hospital and consultant members using information from its UK-wide health dataset.
The services allow users to reflect on performance compared to their peers and provides greater transparency around activities and the intention is not only to inform patient choices but to support the sector in improving patient care.
This initial stage of benchmarking allows hospitals to see how their data compares to a national view and their position among their peers. Hospitals can view themselves compared to peers for volume, length of stay, adverse events, and patient reported outcomes.
PHIN’s consultant benchmarking allows users to compare their private admitted activity with both the average and other groups of consultants. They can choose peers based on their level of activity or by the region in which they work and apply further filters as needed such as procedures or specialties.
PHIN chief executive Ian Gargan said that the benchmarking service had been introduced to “improve the transparency of quality and safety of care across the independent sector”. He addded that this signals a shift, “from building the data infrastructure to demonstrating PHIN’s real-world impact”.
Gargan emphasised that all the information in the benchmarking reports is secure and only available within the PHIN portal to authorised users.
PHIN collects information on safety, quality and costs from the UK’s 690 hospitals and 12,600 surgical consultants providing private healthcare.
