Quality of care in ISTCs

Abstract

I was puzzled by Pollock and Kirkwood's1 claim to have conducted ‘the first independent evaluation’ of Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTCs) when they were clearly aware of our earlier study as they cite it.2 Far from showing, as they state, ‘how case-mix in ISTCs differs from the NHS making comparisons of costs and quality difficult’, we demonstrated that when we allowed for case-mix differences, there was little difference in patient reported outcomes between those treated in NHS providers and those treated in ISTCs. If anything, outcomes were slightly better in ISTCs though we speculated that this may reflect the Healthcare Commission's finding that patients in ISTCs reported a better experience of the humanity of care than those in NHS providers.