On 10 May 2013, the Secretary of State for Health gave permission to the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), of which this hospital is a member, to conduct a pilot exercise to evaluate the potential benefits of linking records of private treatment to records of any subsequent NHS treatment. The exercise is expected to demonstrate potentially important improvements to the measurement and management of clinical quality, to facilitate enhanced regulation of the private healthcare industry, and to provide better information to support patients’ choices. The exercise will look for any instances where patients in private hospitals subsequently needed unplanned care in an NHS hospital.

The pilot exercise will involve around 650,000 patient records from around 150 private hospitals, including some from this hospital.

All clinical data will be processed anonymously, with any information which could identify individual patients removed. However, in order to first identify any records held by the NHS matching those for patients treated privately, basic personal data (name, date of birth, postcode, treatment date and, where available, NHS Number) will be notified to the Health & Social Care Information Centre (the Government body responsible for holding and processing information for the NHS) for one-time use. This data will not be retained by HSCIC after processing.

The use of this data will benefit future patients.

If you were admitted for treatment at this hospital in 2012 and would prefer that your information should not be used for this study, please send an email to the address below, or ask a member of the hospital’s administrative staff to do so on your behalf. If your data is included, we will make every effort to withhold it.

datalinkage@phin.org.uk