Patients and the public are to have easier access to information on how well healthcare providers in the independent sector are meeting standards.
The information can be accessed by visiting the Healthcare Commission’s own website at: www.healthcarecommission.org.uk and going to the Your Local Health Services section. Anna Walker, Chief Executive of the Healthcare Commission, said: “We want to make sure that patients have access to information about the standards of care they can expect to receive, wherever they receive it. It’s important that patients know that healthcare services meet these standards. All healthcare providers should be accountable to the communities they serve.”
Each independent sector provider is assessed against 32 core standards and a range of service-specific standards. These standards are not the same as the ones that apply to the NHS but they do cover broadly similar issues. They look at the minimum requirements for a provider to practice, ranging from ensuring that employees are appropriately recruited and receive adequate training to ensuring that medical equipment is decontaminated properly.
In October last year, the Commission published its annual State of Healthcare Report, which for the first time gave an overall national picture of performance in the independent sector against core minimum standards. The new web service contains the details of how individual independent providers faired against each of those standards, at the time of inspection. Users will be able to search the information by provider name or by postcode, as well as by standard. To make this information more accessible and relevant to the public, the results have been grouped under four important questions headings: “How safe and clean is the service?”; “How good is the care I will receive?”; “Will I be treated with dignity and respect?”; “How well is the organisation managed?”
