Directory of Hospitals
Searching the Directory
This section enables you to search the CareHealth Directory of Hospitals.
We have set up the following special searches to give you immediate access to: the main
private hospital groups in the UK, the private patient units in NHS Trust hospitals,
a list of all other private hospitals in the UK,
and a new section on private hospitals outside the UK.
For further information about any of these, click on the appropriate link below.
To search the CareHealth Directory of Hospitals according to your own requirements,
enter text to search for in the box below and click on the Search button.
Choose text which may appear in one of the following:
- Hospital Name
- Street Name
- Town or City
- County
- Postcode (first two or three letters).
Detailed Information
This section describes how the information about an individual hospital is organized,
and explains some of the terms used.
Using the directory
When you choose one of the options above, you are given a list of hospitals, which
contains basic information about the hospital (Owner, Name, Town, City or County).
To obtain details of one of the hospitals, click on the Name of the hospital.
You then get detailed information about the hospital. If you want a map to show where
the hospital is located, click on the Postcode.
Hospitals included
The directory currently lists hospitals providing acute medical treatment only. The
intention is that all such independent hospitals are listed, together with NHS Trust
Private Patient Units. These units provide hotel style facilities, including private
rooms, which are similar to those offered by independent hospitals. Many other NHS
hospitals have “pay beds” which are used by patients paying directly or through
their medical insurance. These beds are not in separate units and do not have hotel style
support services. NHS hospitals simply with pay beds are not listed.
It is intended to add a separate listing for independent hospitals specialising in
psychiatric care shortly. Independent hospitals providing long term residential care will
not be included.
The information shown has been compiled from published sources issued by the hospitals,
supplemented by their own responses to an individual questionnaire. All hospitals shown
have been given the opportunity to review the information shown and complete any missing
sections. They are, of course, not obliged to do this.
Contact details
This gives address details and shows the hospital’s owner. A link is provided to
show a map of the hospital’s location.
Accreditation and Membership of Insurer Networks
If the hospital has been accredited by an external organisation for the quality of its
services and procedures, the accreditation is shown. A brief description of the
accreditation schemes is given in Choosing a Private Hospital.
Membership of the Independent Healthcare Association is indicated. Hospitals which are
members are required to become accredited by one of four approved organisations. The IHA
also requires hospitals to follow an external complaints procedures code, which can
include external adjudication.
The main private medical insurance companies have lists of hospitals which are approved
for use by subscribers to their schemes. The lists may vary between different schemes from
the same insurer. Here you can check which hospitals are included under which schemes.
Details of the different medical insurance schemes are shown in
Policies and Premiums.
You can see which hospitals offer fixed price packages. All the large hospital groups
offer fixed price arrangements. Increasing numbers of independent hospitals and NHS Trust
Private Patient Units also offer these arrangements.
A range for the daily room charge at each hospital is shown where available. This
relates only to the accommodation and hotel services part of a stay in hospital and does
not include consultants’ fees, theatre time or other medical expenses.
An indication is given of the number of consultants who have arrangements to admit
patients to the hospital.
Resources and facilities
This section shows the number of in-patient beds at each hospital. A separate figure
shows how many of these beds are single rooms with ensuite facilities. A difference
between the two figures implies that some beds are in shared rooms, often rooms with two
beds. The information on insurer networks shows those hospitals at which subscribers to
certain schemes may be required to share a room.
Most hospitals also have additional beds for day case or out-patient treatment, which
are not shown.
Hospitals which provide treatment for children generally have rooms which a parent can
share with their child.
You can see whether a hospital has a high dependency unit or an intensive care unit.
Intensive care units provide the highest level of continuous monitoring and support for
emergency cases or for people recovering after major surgery or experiencing complications
after routine surgery. Only a small number of independent hospitals have intensive care
units on site. Some independent hospitals share a site with an NHS Trust hospital and have
arrangements for patients to have access to their intensive care units. Otherwise,
independent hospitals must have arrangements to transfer patients if necessary to nearby
NHS Trust hospitals. High dependency units also provide high levels of continuous care and
monitoring and have facilities which are mid-way between intensive care units and ordinary
hospital beds.
Specialist capabilities and most frequent procedures
The aim in this section is not to list every facility and every procedure which each
hospital offers. Almost all independent hospitals will have X-ray facilities, for example,
and will carry out the most popular operations such as hip and knee replacements and
treatment for hernia and cataracts. It can be confusing rather than helpful to see long
lists of very similar services for each hospital. Rather, information is given on those
specialist capabilities which are only offered by certain hospitals.
You can see which hospitals have an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scanner and/or a
CT (computerised tomography) scanner. These are sophisticated and expensive devices which
help medical personnel diagnose conditions and plan treatment. Consultants often arrange
these scans for patients on an out-patient basis before treatment begins. (Such scans can
cost £500 and there are differences between private medical insurance schemes according
to whether they cover out-patient consultations and tests before a patient begins their
stay in hospital.)
Those hospitals with specialist neurosurgery capabilities, including brain surgery, are
indicated.
Hospitals’ capabilities in the field of cardiac care are shown. These range from
cardiac diagnostic services only (without facilities for cardiac surgery) to cardiology
(non-invasive treatment of heart conditions, such as angioplasty) to major cardiac surgery
in specialist cardiac care units.
You can see which hospitals specialise in children’s medicine and surgery, or
paediatrics. As the Guide to Choosing a Hospital states, it is important that children are
cared for by specially trained Registered Sick Children’s Nurses. You can check this
on the list of questions about each hospital’s quality standards and procedures.
Hospitals offering specialist fertility clinics are also shown.
To help users of the Directory get a sense of which areas of medicine each hospital
actually specialises in, we have asked hospitals to provide a list of their ten most
frequent operations/procedures over the last twelve months. As a broad rule, hospitals
which carry out certain procedures frequently are likely to have built up high levels of
expertise in those fields. There is also a space for hospitals to indicate other regular
operations/procedures and those which they do not offer.
Quality standards
The final section on each hospital shows answers, where available, to most of the key
questions on quality standards and procedures which prospective patients should check, as
described in the Health Quality Service’s guide
What you need to ask about treatment in an independent sector hospital.
Please refer to this section for an explanation of the issues covered.
Compliance with most of these quality standards is covered by the external
accreditation processes which many independent hospitals have successfully passed. This is
indicated, together with the relevant accreditation. For hospitals which are not currently
accredited, their compliance with the standards is shown as coming directly from the
hospital itself.
Where no information is shown, it is not publicly available, and we have not received a
response from the hospital concerned.
