Private hospitals to face NHS-style red tape inspections
Private hospitals are to face broadly the same system of inspection and regulation as National Health Service establishments, the Healthcare Commission will announce this week. The body that inspects the NHS and gives the private sector a licence to operate believes that by 2008 hospitals, clinics and treatment centres run by the independent sector might treat one in seven non-emergency patients.
As the government's market in the supply of healthcare services develops, it is expected the NHS will be the single largest source of funding for hospitals in the independent sector by 2010, the commission says in the final draft of a consultation document - seen by the Financial Times - which it is to issue shortly.
That new approach to acquiring NHS services means that a "level playing field" of inspection and regulation is needed between NHS-run and independent services.
At present, private hospitals and clinics are inspected annually - against, until recently, an inspection once every three or four years for NHS bodies. But against that, different methods of assessment are used that would require independent providers to supply "significantly" more data than they do at present.
The commission's aim is to produce the same risk-based assessment for independent healthcare providers as it is developing for NHS-run bodies.
That means moving by 2008 to a system where private providers make a self-declaration of the standards of care they provide that will then be checked against information they and others provide.
All establishments will be visited regularly, based on risk assessment. But strong performers will no longer get an annual inspection. As in NHS-run establishments, however, there will still be unannounced spot checks, with the results published, as well as follow-up inspections where concerns are raised.
The government will have to legislate before the changes can be made in full. As a result, all independent sector establishments, which include mental health services, 80 per cent of whose patients are NHS-funded, beauty salons that use lasers, and in time establishments that provide botox and other non-surgical cosmetic procedures will be inspected next year.
New sets of data that the independent sector will have to provide are being developed, but with the aim of lightening the regulatory burden and aligning it with the rest of the NHS.
"In our view, it is inevitable that we will continue to need more detail in our monitoring of the independent sector for the time being," the consultation document says, "and that we rely less on self-assurance than in the NHS to compensate for the relative scarcity of independent sources of information".
The commission also plans to hold primary care trusts and other NHS commissioners to account for the services they buy from the independent sector.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6636423c-5fb3-11da-a628-0000779e2340.html
As the government's market in the supply of healthcare services develops, it is expected the NHS will be the single largest source of funding for hospitals in the independent sector by 2010, the commission says in the final draft of a consultation document - seen by the Financial Times - which it is to issue shortly.
That new approach to acquiring NHS services means that a "level playing field" of inspection and regulation is needed between NHS-run and independent services.
At present, private hospitals and clinics are inspected annually - against, until recently, an inspection once every three or four years for NHS bodies. But against that, different methods of assessment are used that would require independent providers to supply "significantly" more data than they do at present.
The commission's aim is to produce the same risk-based assessment for independent healthcare providers as it is developing for NHS-run bodies.
That means moving by 2008 to a system where private providers make a self-declaration of the standards of care they provide that will then be checked against information they and others provide.
All establishments will be visited regularly, based on risk assessment. But strong performers will no longer get an annual inspection. As in NHS-run establishments, however, there will still be unannounced spot checks, with the results published, as well as follow-up inspections where concerns are raised.
The government will have to legislate before the changes can be made in full. As a result, all independent sector establishments, which include mental health services, 80 per cent of whose patients are NHS-funded, beauty salons that use lasers, and in time establishments that provide botox and other non-surgical cosmetic procedures will be inspected next year.
New sets of data that the independent sector will have to provide are being developed, but with the aim of lightening the regulatory burden and aligning it with the rest of the NHS.
"In our view, it is inevitable that we will continue to need more detail in our monitoring of the independent sector for the time being," the consultation document says, "and that we rely less on self-assurance than in the NHS to compensate for the relative scarcity of independent sources of information".
The commission also plans to hold primary care trusts and other NHS commissioners to account for the services they buy from the independent sector.
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6636423c-5fb3-11da-a628-0000779e2340.html
posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic at
8:53 AM
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