Download our updated information on private care in the UK.

The latest information for Patient Volumes, Length of Stay, Never Events, Infections, and Health Outcomes is now available to download. Our datasheets cover the period from Wednesday 1 April 2020 to Tuesday 31 March 2021. 

The published measures show: 

  • 16 serious safety incidents (known as Never Events) which were reported across 257 independent and NHS hospitals treating private patients from Wednesday 1 April 2020 to Tuesday 31 March 2021. This compares with 18 Never Events across 273 sites in the period from Wednesday 1 January 2020 to Thursday 31 December 2020.
  • 150 reported Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAIs) across 730,000 bed days, at the sites where we could calculate a rate. This shows a slight change in the overall HCAI infection rate from 24 per 100,000 bed days in the previous period (Wednesday 1 January 2020 to Thursday 31 December 2020) to 20.5 per 100,000 bed days. In addition, there were 20 HCAIs for which we could not calculate a rate, making a total of 170 HCAIs.
  • 41 reported Surgical Site Infections (SSI) across 21,000 patients undergoing hip and knee replacement procedures. The overall percentage risk remains unchanged at 0.2%. There were 22 SSIs for which we could not calculate a percentage risk, making the total of 63 SSIs.
  • The percentage of patients reporting positive health improvement following hip replacement surgery (undertaken as a primary procedure) has remained at 98% in the latest period ending March 2020. For knee replacement surgery (undertaken as a primary procedure) the percentage of patients reporting positive health improvement was 94.7%, and for knee revision surgery this was 84.1%.
  • The total number of private spells in the UK decreased from 527,00 to 496,000 in the current period. This is as expected as the current publication period coincides with the calendar year beginning at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK.

Alongside private activity, PHIN has also published statistics on NHS volumes in facilities which treat private patients – including all independent and NHS hospitals which treat private patients. This is to ensure that people using PHIN’s website can get a more complete understanding of the scale and nature of treatment offered at hospitals where they may be considering private care.

PHIN has produced downloadable PDF and Excel versions of these datasets which can be accessed below. The breakdown of NHS funded activity by site and procedure is also available in the downloadable volume and length of stay datasheet.

Go to Our Data to view and download all the latest datasheets