CMA Letter to The London Clinic about one breach of the Private Healthcare Order
Letter to The London Clinic about one breach of Part 3 of the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014.
Documents
Details
Part 3 of the Order requires a private hospital operator such as The London Clinic to publish on its website details of payments made to, and a summary of the duties performed by, referring consultants who both exercise practising privileges at that hospital, and who also hold a part-time position at that hospital.
The purpose of this requirement is to address the concern identified in the CMA’s Market Investigation that private hospitals could incentivise consultants to refer patients to that hospital through payments for medical work at a level that was above the fair market value for such services, essentially hiding referral incentives. The publication of payments made for part-time roles, together with the provision of information on the duties performed by the consultant in return for these payments, should make the scale and basis of such payments transparent, and thereby ensure that private hospitals are less able to hide referral incentives.
The London Clinic failed to do this, as instead of publishing details of payments made to, and a summary of the duties performed by, referring Consultants who held a part-time position at The London Clinic it published the wording “All our Consultants are remunerated at a fair market rate for their services” between April 2015 and 5 October 2021. This fell a long way short of being information which would be helpful to prospective patients.