Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 29 April (HL16567), whether the National Consultant Information Programme (1) is publicly accessible to patients, (2) includes data on consultants practising in the independent sector, and (3) records the practising privileges held by consultants; and what assessment they have made of that Programme's compliance with the Paterson Inquiry's recommendation for a single repository of information about consultants across England.

The National Consultant Information Programme (NCIP) is publicly accessible to patients on the Getting It Right First Time website.

The NCIP portal is a free data platform containing consultant and provider-level activity and outcomes data for over 500 procedures in 13 surgical specialties. It covers National Health Service practices, NHS funded work in the independent sector, and privately funded work carried out in the NHS. Over time, the ambition is to add independent sector data, to provide a single repository of whole practice. Currently, patients are not able to access this data.

NCIP allows consultants in 13 surgical specialties to access their individual outcomes data, for personal learning, clinical governance, and appraisals. NCIP does not record practising privileges in the independent sector.

NCIP is a critical part of the response to the Paterson Inquiry, which recommended that there should be a single repository of the whole practice of consultants across England. By sharing high-quality outcome data, consultants, their appraisers, and responsible officers can compare outcomes for their practice or use peer review to improve their performance in a way that is measurable and objective, leading to better safety and efficiency across the NHS.