You can now download important clinical data on private care
Latest information for patient volumes, length of stay, never events, infections and health outcomes is now available to download from the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN).
Its data covers the year from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021.
The measures show:
16 serious safety incidents – never events – were reported across 257 independent and NHS hospitals treating private patients, compared with 18 across 273 sites in the previous period.
150 reported healthcare associated infections (HCAIs) across 730,000 bed days, at the sites where a rate could be calculated.
This shows a slight change in the overall HCAI infection rate from 24 per 100,000 bed days in the previous period (Wednesday 1 January 2020 to Thursday 31 December 2020) to 20.5 per 100,000 bed days. In addition, there were 20 HCAIs for which it could not calculate a rate, making a total of 170 HCAIs.
41 reported surgical site infections (SSI) across 21,000 patients undergoing hip and knee replacement procedures. The overall percentage risk remains unchanged at 0.2%. There were 22 SSIs for which PHIN could not calculate a percentage risk, making the total of 63 SSIs.
The percentage of patients reporting positive health improvement following hip replacement surgery – undertaken as a primary procedure – has remained at 98% in the latest period ending March 2020.
For knee replacement surgery undertaken as a primary procedure, the percentage of patients reporting positive health improvement changed slightly from 94.9% to 94.7%, with knee revision surgery changing from 85.7% to 84.1% over the same periods.
The total number of private spells in the UK decreased from 527,00 to 496,000 in the current period. This was as expected, as the period coincided with the calendar year beginning at the start of the UK’s Covid-19 pandemic.
Alongside private activity, PHIN has also published statistics on NHS volumes in facilities which treat private patients – including all independent and NHS hospitals which treat private patients.
It said this was to ensure that people using its website could gain a more complete understanding of the scale and nature of treatment offered at hospitals where they might be considering private care.
A spokesman said: ‘PHIN has produced downloadable PDF and Excel versions of these datasets, which can be accessed below. The breakdown of NHS funded activity by site and procedure is also available in the downloadable volume and length of stay datasheet.
‘The datasheets can be downloaded on our website.’