CMA approves the Strategic Plan under the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order

 

CMA approves the Strategic Plan under the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order

The Competition and Markets Authority has approved the Strategic Plan of the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) required by the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014.

The Order aims to address the adverse effects on competition that the CMA identified in its final report on the private healthcare market investigation.  The markets for private healthcare provision and private healthcare insurance were the subject of a market investigation reference in the UK (2012-2014).  The CMA’s final report concluded that certain features of the markets for privately-funded healthcare services were leading to adverse effects on competition.  The CMA introduced a number of remedies (including transparency remedies about private hospitals’ performance for patients and reduction in the incentives offered to referring clinicians). 

The Order requires the establishment of an industry information organisation to make private healthcare information (about private healthcare facilities and consultants) available via an independent public website.

The PHIN was approved for these purposes in 2014.  PHIN is required to submit to the CMA a five year plan, developed and approved by its members setting out how it proposes to collect the information specified in this Order and the basis on which it may licence access to the information.

The PHIN Strategic Plan outlines how the sector will deliver the remainder of the requirements of the Order.  The CMA states that it will monitor progress closely and stands ready to take enforcement action if hospitals or consultants fail to meet the standards and timescales set out.

3Since the final report, many of the competition and consumer welfare concerns identified by the CMA as problematic if they were “extensively and rigidly applied” have worsened and been applied by all the major private medical insurers (PMIs).  The consultants have attempted to have the issues looked at afresh by the CMA, using a variety of legal tools.  These attempts have met administrative priority objections.  However, while the original MIR was limited to a dataset on market dynamics prevailing up to 2012 there does not appear to be appetite on the part of the CMA to conduct another root and branch investigation.

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/private-healthcare-market-investigation