§ Clive EffordTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to publish performance statistics for individual consultants for work carried out in(a) the NHS and (b) the private sector; and if he will make a statement. [52911]
§ Ms BlearsThe Government agreed with the Bristol inquiry recommendation that patients and the public must be able to obtain information as to the relative performance of the trust and the services and the consultant units within the trust (recommendation 155 of the report of the public inquiry into children's heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary 1984–1995).
The Government made a further commitment that the Department would publish information on individual consultants. As a first step the Department will be publishing outcomes from coronary artery bypass graft operations by individual surgeon. Data collection started on 1 April 2002 and the first set of data will be published in 2004.
The Department is working with the medical profession to extend the number and range of specialities where 863W robust, rigorous and risk-adjusted information on both the consultant's and the unit's comparative performance can be published.
On 1 April this year, the National Care Standards Commission took over responsibility for the regulation of independent health care providers, including private hospitals. Data on key clinical indicators that are a reflection on the quality of care received by a patient will be collected by inspection teams, and this will continue when the Commission for Healthcare Audit and Inspection takes over the regulatory system. The approaches to data collection will be tested to ensure that it is robust before publishing the results. It is likely that in due course, data on clinical performance will be published in line with that on national health service hospitals.