Patient safety & quality accounts

Enhancing our care

As an independent healthcare provider, our aim is to deliver the highest levels of patient and member safety, care and service. Our Quality Assurance Framework supports the planning, delivery, monitoring, and continuous improvement of all the care and support we provide.
Our Quality Assurance Framework

1. Safety –  Meeting the highest possible standards of safety by avoiding harm, upholding professional standards and acting responsibly.
2. Effectiveness – Providing evidence-based health and wellbeing expertise and services that lead to excellent outcomes.
3. Experience – Being a trusted partner to our patients and customers by giving them a positive, reassuring and personalised experience.

We measure our success and Quality through local and national monitoring, analysis and reporting of trends and incidents.

Each month we report on the Safety, Effectiveness and Experience aspects of Quality across our organisation to our operational Boards. A detailed review is presented to the Quality Committee and the Board Quality and Safety Committee each quarter. These reports help us track successes and areas for further improvement, with results shared across the organisation.

Further details can be found in our 2021 Annual Report.

2021 highlights include:

210,000 hospital episodes through self-pay, private medical insurance and NHS referrals

4,227 people participated in our free-to-access flagship programmes

100% of our hospitals rated Good or Outstanding by national regulators in 2022

Overall Quality

As a large independent healthcare provider, the Quality of care we provide is monitored by a number of external groups. In England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is responsible for regulating our hospitals and registered medical clinics through monitoring and inspections. Hospitals and clinics in Scotland and Wales are assessed by Health Improvement Scotland (HIS) and Health Inspectorate Wales (HIW) respectively. All our hospitals are subject to the same level of scrutiny and review as NHS facilities.

Our CQC Ratings

The regulators complete reviews of all our hospitals. Four of our hospitals – Cambridge, Chichester and Leeds – were awarded the highest possible CQC rating of ‘Outstanding’.

Overall, 100 per cent of our hospitals have been assessed as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ in 2021 by national regulators. If hospitals were found by the regulators to require improvements, we responded by making immediate enhancements. We then notify the regulator of the improvements and wait for a re-inspection. We are confident that we have been able to enhance and improve the Quality of care across all our hospitals.

Enhancing your safety

We participate in the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) (previously Public Health England) mandatory surveillance and reporting of healthcare-associated infections. Further details are provided within our annual Quality Report. In 2021, we saw a decrease in the overall number of avoidable bloodstream infections from 19.4 to 13.6 per 100,000 bed days, compared with 2020.