Private sector treatment centres are treating less complex patients than the NHS

Summary Objectives In England, patients can choose to have their NHS elective care delivered by private (or ‘independent sector’) providers or by the NHS. Providers are paid a fixed tariff for each type of procedure. Our objectives were to compare NHS providers with private treatment centres in term...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 2010-08, Vol.103 (8), p.322-331
Main Authors: Mason, Anne, Street, Andrew, Verzulli, Rossella
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Age Factors
Biological and medical sciences
Comorbidity
Delivery of Health Care - standards
Delivery of Health Care - statistics & numerical data
England
Forms and Records Control - standards
General aspects
Hospitals
Humans
Income
Medical sciences
Private Sector
State Medicine - standards
State Medicine - statistics & numerical data
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Summary:Summary Objectives In England, patients can choose to have their NHS elective care delivered by private (or ‘independent sector’) providers or by the NHS. Providers are paid a fixed tariff for each type of procedure. Our objectives were to compare NHS providers with private treatment centres in terms of (a) the quality of data coding and (b) patient complexity. Design We compared elective patients aged 18 years and over treated in the NHS and private sectors using the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data for 2007–2008. The absence of diagnostic information was used as a measure of data quality. We analysed differences in complexity for each of the 30 Healthcare Resource Groups (HRGs) that together account for 78% of coded private treatment centre activity. Statistical significance was assessed at the 1% level. Setting Hospitals and treatment centres. Main outcome measures Patient complexity was assessed by four characteristics: age; number of diagnoses; number of procedures; and income deprivation of residential area. Results NHS providers treated almost 7 million adult elective patients in 2007–2008. Fewer than 100,000 patients were treated by private providers (1.3% of elective activity). Less than 1% of NHS patients lacked diagnostic information compared to 36% of patients treated by private providers. For the top 30 HRGs, NHS patients had significantly (p
ISSN:0141-0768
1758-1095
DOI:10.1258/jrsm.2010.100044