Ensure patients know your terms

With the Competition and Markets Authority pushing for greater transparency over consultants’ fees, and hospitals publishing more information about specialists who use their facilities, Garry Chapman says it’s time to ‘get ahead of the curve’.

As regular readers of Independent Practitioner Today will be aware, the Private Healthcare Inform­ation Network (PHIN) has now been appointed by the Compet­ition and Markets Authority (CMA) to run a consumer-based website providing data on both hospitals and consultants. (See also ‘GPs to reap data benefit’).

This will enable patients to have more information and allow many of them to make their own choices about treatment.