Patients at risk of quality failures between NHS and private hospitals, study shows
Posted on Tuesday 10 November 2026
Researchers from the Universities of York, Manchester, and Birmingham found that systems for assuring the quality and safety of care in NHS and private hospitals exist within organisations but they do not work well between organisations.
The report shows that patients rely too much on consultants themselves choosing to share or provide information about their performance or any concerns with the hospitals where they work.
It also states that data sharing between NHS and private hospitals has been hampered by misplaced concerns about GDPR and confidentiality. Hospitals should have a clear legal duty to share any concerns they have about a doctor with any other hospital where that doctor works.
Paterson Inquiry
The new research comes six years after an inquiry report was prompted by a surgeon who went to prison for twenty years for doing unapproved and entirely unnecessary operations on hundreds of patients across both the NHS and private hospitals in the West Midlands.
The Paterson Inquiry into the case made a series of recommendations for reforms to the systems for assuring the quality and safety of care and protecting patients and the public, which were largely accepted by the government. But the research finds that most of those recommendations have not been implemented.
Professor Karen Bloor, from the University of York's Centre for Health Economics, said: "Our health care system increasingly includes patient care in private as well as NHS hospitals, and many doctors work in both settings. To monitor doctors' practice and to protect patients, we need oversight of complete data from both the NHS and private sector."
Data sharing
The Paterson Inquiry recommended that there should be one database of all hospital care, covering both NHS and private hospitals and available for doctors, hospitals and patients to check the quality and safety of care. Six years later, that has yet to happen. Although the data is being collected, it is not shared effectively.
Professor Kieran Walshe, from the University of Manchester, said: “Most care in both NHS and private hospitals is safe, and we did not find differences between them in the quality of care.
“But when things go wrong, information about problems is often not shared between the NHS and private hospitals where doctors work. As a result, poor practice and serious harm to patients can happen for years before action is taken.
“The Paterson Inquiry recommended new systems for sharing data about the whole of every doctor’s practice wherever they worked and highlighting concerns much earlier, but those reforms have not happened.”
Shared care record
The research also showed that since 2012, all doctors have had regular, annual appraisals and five-yearly checks that they are still fit to practice, but those appraisals and checks are mostly done in the NHS hospital where they work and don’t always cover the work they do in private hospitals, nor are they always shared with those private hospitals.
Other findings include that when patients are treated in both an NHS and a private hospital, their medical records are often not transferred or shared. The report recommends that all hospitals should contribute to a shared care record and have access to the same medical records.
A growing amount of NHS funded care, mainly elective surgery, is provided by private hospitals, but the NHS Integrated Care Boards that commission NHS funded care from private hospitals lack capacity and capability to monitor and manage those contracts.
The study was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
