Do I Have to Publish My Fees to PHIN?

Submitting your fee information to the Private Healthcare Information Network is a legal requirement under a binding competition order, not a voluntary transparency initiative. The GMC treats compliance as a professional duty, and the CMA has publicly escalated enforcement action against individual consultants who do not comply.

Most private consultants encounter PHIN as an administrative email they have been ignoring. Very few know that two separate regimes sit behind it.

What is PHIN and why does it exist?

The Private Healthcare Information Network publishes information about private healthcare so that patients can compare providers before choosing one. It exists because the Competition and Markets Authority investigated the private healthcare market and concluded that patients could not make informed choices without it.

The output of that investigation was the Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014, and that Order is the legal instrument that matters here. It is binding. It is not guidance, a code of practice, or a set of expectations.

What are you actually required to submit?

Under the Order, consultants are required to provide information including their typical fees for initial consultations, follow-up consultations, and common procedures, along with details of their practice and any financial interests.

Two points worth being precise about.

"Typical" does not mean a binding price list. You are describing what you usually charge, not committing to it for every patient. Complexity and circumstances vary, and PHIN's model accommodates that.

Financial interests are part of it. If you have an interest in a facility you refer to, that is within the scope of the transparency the Order was designed to produce.

Where does the GMC come in?

Separately, and this is the part that turns an administrative obligation into a professional one.

The GMC's guidance on financial and commercial arrangements and conflicts of interest requires doctors to tell patients about fees before seeking consent to treatment, and to say if part of the fee goes to another professional. That same guidance refers to the legal requirement to provide fee information to PHIN.

So there are two hooks. The CMA Order makes it a legal requirement. The GMC makes it a professional standards matter. A consultant ignoring PHIN is potentially exposed on both.

Is the Order actually enforced?

Yes, and this is the detail that changes how seriously most consultants take it.

In October 2022 the CMA announced an escalation in public enforcement action against individual consultants and hospitals, aimed at those "who have made little or no effort to comply with their legally-binding obligations". Enforcement of the Order sits with the CMA rather than PHIN, and PHIN operates an agreed route for referring non-compliant consultants to it. For a private consultant whose practice depends on reputation, public enforcement is not a trivial outcome.

The point is not that enforcement is aggressive. It is that the Order has teeth and has been used, which distinguishes it from the many transparency initiatives that quietly go unenforced.

Why do so many consultants not comply?

Three reasons, and none of them is defiance.

It arrives looking like marketing. PHIN correspondence reads like a directory asking you to complete a profile, which is exactly the sort of email a busy consultant deletes.

Nobody explains the legal basis. The requirement is set out in a competition order most doctors have never heard of, arising from a market investigation they had no reason to follow.

The data flow is confusing. Some information reaches PHIN through the hospitals you work at, and some has to come from you. Consultants reasonably assume the hospital has handled it, and for parts of it they may be right.

What should you do?

Five steps.

Claim your PHIN profile. You cannot check what is published about you until you have access to it
Check what is already there. Hospitals submit activity data, and errors in it are yours to notice
Submit your fee information, covering initial consultation, follow-up and the procedures you commonly perform
Keep it current. A fee published three years ago that no longer reflects what you charge is its own problem, both for the Order and for the GMC duty to inform patients before consent
Tell patients your fees directly as well. PHIN publication does not discharge the GMC duty to inform the patient in front of you before they consent

That last point is worth separating out, because the two obligations are often confused. Publishing to PHIN serves the market. Telling your patient what this will cost, before they agree to it, serves them. Doing one does not do the other.

The practical side

Fee transparency is easier to maintain when your actual fees are recorded somewhere structured rather than living in a price list document and a few habits.

If your invoicing holds services with prices attached, answering "what do you typically charge for an initial consultation" is a lookup rather than an estimate, and updating a published fee after a price rise becomes part of the same task. Atlacare holds services and prices against the organisation and generates invoices from them, which at least means there is one authoritative answer to the question rather than several.

Our guide to CQC registration for private gynaecology covers the other regulatory obligation private consultants most commonly discover late, and both tend to surface when a practice formalises.

This is general information about a regulatory obligation, not legal advice. The requirements under the CMA Order and the GMC's guidance are updated. Confirm the current position with PHIN and the GMC, and take advice if you have received any compliance correspondence.

Sources: Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order 2014 · PHIN, CMA enforcement action · GMC, financial and commercial arrangements