One in three private hospitals are failing patients

ALMOST a third of private hospitals fail to meet patient safety standards, according to a watchdog.

The Care Quality Commission raised ‘major concerns’ over safety and leadership following the inspection of 200 independent hospitals.

It found the majority provided good quality care but there was ‘a lack of effective oversight’ of consultants who were not directly employed by the hospitals.

The regulator cited rogue breast cancer surgeon Ian Paterson, who was jailed for 20 years last year after carrying out unnecessary operations in both private and NHS hospitals. The CQC said management often failed to ensure staff undertook only procedures that were relevant to their levels of experience, while some had cluttered and unclean operating theatres.

Some 62 per cent of private hospitals were rated good and 8 per cent outstanding, while 30 per cent require improvement, similar to levels in acute NHS hospitals. Professor Ted Baker, chief inspector of hospitals at the CQC, said: ‘In particular, we found that monitoring of medical governance such as scope of practice of individual consultants was not consistently robust.

‘Such a failure of effective governance was brought into sharp focus with the recent case of the surgeon Ian Paterson.’

The Royal College of Surgeons said the report ‘exposes the poorer practices of some independent providers and underlines the need for a renewed focus on improving patient safety’.