Private hospital The London Clinic has been reprimanded by the competition regulator for failing to publish payments made to referring part-time consultants for six and a half years.
Instead, between April 2015 and 5 October 2021, the clinic published a message simply noting that its consultants were paid “at a fair market rate for their services”.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) criticised the approach and said it broke Part 3 of the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014.
“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,’” the CMA said.
“This fell a long way short of being information which would be helpful to prospective patients.”
Payment transparency
Private hospitals are required publish on their website details of payments made to, and a summary of the duties performed by, referring consultants who exercise practising privileges at that hospital, and hold a part-time position at that hospital.
This is to address the concern previously 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 information on the duties performed by the consultant, should make the scale and basis of such payments transparent, and thereby ensure that private hospitals are less able to hide referral incentives.
In breach before pandemic and restructuring
Responding to the CMA, The London Clinic said it was an oversight with the duration and was exacerbated by the unique circumstances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
It added that for two of the years, its relationship with referring consultants was being restructured which made it difficult to keep information on part-time payments up-to-date and accurate.
However, the CMA noted the clinic was in breach of the order before both the pandemic and the restructuring and said it was “therefore concerned with the nature of this breach, notwithstanding the challenges posed by Covid-19”.
“The CMA considers it important that prospective patients are able to find out the links between consultants and the hospitals that consultants refer patients to for treatment,” it added.
Voluntary changes
After being informed by the CMA of the breach on 23 August 2021, the clinic ended the breach by publishing details of payments made to and the duties performed by consultants on its website.
It also made a series of voluntary changes to seek to prevent a recurrence, which the regulator recognised.
“Due to the nature and extent of the voluntary actions that have been taken by The London Clinic, the CMA does not consider it necessary to take further formal enforcement action at this time. We reserve the right to take formal enforcement action if there is further non-compliance,” it added.
Health & Protection contacted The London Clinic, but it did not wish to comment further.
