About PlainNHS

Reviewed by PlainNHS ·

Our mission is to make UK NHS performance data freely accessible to patients, journalists, and researchers. PlainNHS aggregates the same upstream NHS Digital, NHS England, and Care Quality Commission datasets that the official portals expose — and presents them with one entity per page, plain-language framing, and a citation to the source agency on every value.

We are not affiliated with the NHS, NHS Digital, NHS England, or the Care Quality Commission. We do not accept compensation from NHS Trusts, GP practices, or any entity covered on the site.

What we cover

  • NHS Trusts — CQC inspection ratings, 18-week RTT performance, A&E 4-hour standard, cancer 62-day pathway, patient satisfaction, bed count.
  • GP practices — ODS code, CQC inspection rating across the five domains, registered patient list, patient survey satisfaction, GP count.
  • Procedures — median and 90th-percentile waiting times by NHS Trust for the highest-volume elective and diagnostic pathways.
  • Comparison — side-by-side comparison of any two NHS Trusts on the same procedure or operational metric.

PlainNHS currently profiles 12 NHS Trusts and 10 GP practices — a selected subset, not England's full provider landscape (around 207 NHS trusts and around 6,150 GP practices, per NHS England and BMA workforce data). We are expanding coverage over time; the current entity count is always shown on the homepage.

Our editorial process

We download raw datasets directly from upstream publishers through documented ETL pipelines. Numeric values on entity pages come from the source agency unmodified. Plain-language framing and explanatory copy are drafted from the underlying data and verified against the official source before publication. The methodology page documents the pipeline in detail.

PlainNHS is compiled by our editorial process from official NHS source data through a continuous editorial pipeline. Every published page is verifiable against the cited NHS source — no fabricated numbers, no extrapolated figures. When a number cannot be derived consistently across the dataset, we disclose the gap or omit the comparison rather than present misleading data.

Team transparency

PlainNHS is operated by a small founder-led publisher (one human operator) with a continuous editorial pipeline. We do not list pseudonymous staff or fabricated editorial credentials.

How we work in more detail

For the long-form explanation of editorial sourcing, the editorial pipeline, and review process, see how we work. For corrections policy see corrections.

Data sources

Every figure on PlainNHS comes from one of three upstream publishers, each releasing under the UK Open Government Licence v3.0:

  • NHS Digital — the statistical-publication arm of NHS England, publishing GP practice ODS data, hospital episode statistics (HES), and detailed statistical publications. Source URL: digital.nhs.uk.
  • NHS England Statistics — the operational-performance statistics releases covering 18-week RTT, A&E 4-hour, cancer 2-week and 62-day, and diagnostic waiting times. Source URL: england.nhs.uk/statistics.
  • Care Quality Commission — the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. Publishes inspection ratings, regulatory notices, and provider-profile data. Source URL: cqc.org.uk.

For Scotland (NHS Lothian and similar), we use the equivalent Public Health Scotland and Care Inspectorate publications. We note where data coverage is England-only.

Data currency

NHS performance data is published monthly, typically with a one-to-two-month lag (for example, March data is published in May). PlainNHS refreshes within one week of each upstream release. Every entity page (Trust, GP practice, procedure) shows the data vintage next to the figures so you can see exactly which reporting period the values relate to.

CQC inspection ratings update on a rolling basis as new inspections are completed; the relevant inspection date is shown next to each rating. CQC publishes new inspection reports continuously, so a rating older than 18-24 months should be checked against the underlying CQC report (linked from every PlainNHS profile).

We do not interpolate, extrapolate, or backfill missing values. If a Trust or GP practice has not yet been included in a published release (for instance, a small-cohort cancer-waiting figure that has been suppressed for statistical-disclosure reasons), the page shows “Not reported” rather than imputing a value.

What makes PlainNHS different

Two design choices distinguish PlainNHS from the official NHS portals:

  • One entity per page. Each NHS Trust, GP practice, and procedure has a dedicated URL with all relevant data and context. Official NHS portals are typically organised around the publishing organisation (e.g. NHS Digital's statistical-publications portal), not around the entity a patient is researching.
  • Plain-language framing alongside the numbers. Each page reads the figures in plain English — what does an RTT 18-week performance of 76% actually mean for a patient considering a referral here? The official portals assume an analyst audience; PlainNHS assumes a patient or carer audience.

We are not a replacement for the source publications. For clinical guidance, statistical methodology questions, or formal data analysis, go directly to NHS Digital, NHS England, or the CQC. PlainNHS is a starting point for patient orientation; the source is always the authoritative reference.

How we got here

PlainNHS grew out of a recurring frustration: every time a friend or family member needed a referral, the same questions came up — how long is the wait at this Trust? what is the CQC rating? can I choose somewhere faster? The data was all public, but scattered across multiple analyst-oriented portals. Aggregating it into one entity-per-page format took only a few weeks of engineering; explaining what each figure means in plain English took longer. The site is the result.

Patient choice in the NHS is real but under-used. The Choose & Book entitlement has existed since 2008, but most patients never see the full list of providers their GP could refer them to. PlainNHS aims to put the relevant data at the patient's fingertips before the GP appointment, so they can have an informed conversation about choice when the time comes.

We are also conscious of the limits of what data can do. A CQC “Outstanding” rating does not guarantee a good clinical outcome; a long median wait at a specific Trust does not predict your individual wait. We try to communicate these limits as plainly as the headline numbers themselves. Where uncertainty in the data is material to the patient choice, we say so.

Site changelog

  • 2026-05 — Site launched with NHS Trust, GP practice, and procedure coverage. Initial 8 plain-language guides, 3 research papers, and the comparison tool.
  • Future updates published as upstream NHS releases arrive (monthly).

Open-source and reproducibility

The PlainNHS rendering layer is built on open-source software (Astro, better-sqlite3, Tailwind CSS). The ETL pipeline that ingests upstream NHS data into our database is documented in the publisher's engineering notes; the SQL that drives every published figure is documented in the methodology section of each research paper. We do not currently publish the rendering codebase, but we do publish the upstream sources, the methodology, and the SQL needed to verify each figure independently.

Editorial decisions and what we choose not to publish

Several types of content sit outside our publishing scope by deliberate choice:

  • Personal data about clinicians. We do not publish individual GP names, consultant directories, or any identifier of named staff at a particular Trust. The Trust and the GP practice are the units of accountability under NHS reporting; the individuals are not.
  • Patient-level information. No PlainNHS page ever shows or implies patient-level data. All upstream sources we use publish aggregates at the level of the entity (Trust, GP practice, procedure code).
  • Rankings or recommendations beyond what NHS England / CQC publish. We present what NHS England and the CQC themselves rank. We do not compute our own “PlainNHS top 10” or imply quality comparisons that the upstream regulators have not made.
  • Imputed values. Where a value is missing from the upstream release, we show “Not reported”. We do not infer values from sibling rows or backfill from prior releases.
  • Clinical advice. PlainNHS is not a clinical decision-support tool. We do not recommend specific procedures, providers, or pathways for individual patients. That is the role of the GP referral conversation and NHS 111.

Independence and conflict of interest

PlainNHS is operated by its editorial process, an independent publisher with no financial or contractual relationship with any NHS Trust, GP practice, NHS England directorate, the CQC, or any private healthcare provider. We do not accept payment for editorial coverage, do not run sponsored content or native advertising, and do not have commercial partnerships with any entity whose data appears on the site. Costs of operation are covered by display advertising shown alongside the editorial content; ad placements are clearly labelled and do not influence what we cover or how we frame it.

Engagement with the NHS

PlainNHS welcomes engagement from NHS Trusts, GP practices, professional bodies, and patient-advocacy organisations. If you represent an entity covered on the site and want to:

  • flag a factual error or stale figure — see our corrections policy and email hello@plainnhs.co.uk with the page URL and the correct value;
  • provide additional context, methodology notes, or background that would help patients interpret the published numbers — we will consider these contributions on the same editorial-process basis as any other source, weighing them against the upstream NHS publication;
  • request that we cover a specific dataset, performance metric, or pathway that we do not currently show — we are open to coverage expansion when the data is publicly available and the addition serves the patient audience.

We do not enter into commercial partnerships, paid placement arrangements, or any agreement that would compromise editorial independence.

Our editorial backlog

The current PlainNHS coverage includes NHS Trusts, GP practices, common elective procedures (RTT-tracked), and a smaller selection of diagnostic procedures. Planned coverage expansions (subject to upstream data availability and editorial bandwidth):

  • Hospital-level mortality indicators (SHMI) once we can present them with appropriate clinical-context framing.
  • Mental-health-trust-specific performance metrics including the Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) waiting standard.
  • Devolved-nation coverage (Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland) where the upstream publications are sufficiently parallel to the English NHS to allow meaningful comparison.
  • Pharmacy and community-dentist coverage where CQC inspection data and NHS Digital's ODS data both support per-entity profiles.

Use of cookies and tracking

We use privacy-focused analytics (Umami) that does not use cookies or collect personally identifiable information. We track aggregate page views, referrer sources, and device categories. We also serve advertising via Google AdSense which uses cookies subject to user consent — full details are in our privacy policy.

Funding

PlainNHS is operated by its editorial process, an independent publisher. The site is funded by display advertising shown alongside the editorial content. Advertising placements are clearly labelled and do not influence which Trusts or procedures we cover, the data presented, or the editorial framing. We do not run native advertising, sponsored content, or paid placements.

Accessibility

PlainNHS is built to WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standards: visible focus indicators, semantic HTML, sufficient colour contrast, and keyboard navigation. If you encounter a page that does not meet these standards, please write to hello@plainnhs.co.uk with the URL and a description of the issue and we will investigate.

Acknowledgements

PlainNHS could not exist without the open-data publishing of NHS Digital, NHS England, and the Care Quality Commission. The patient-facing usefulness of this site is entirely built on the work of those public bodies and the analyst teams within them that publish meticulous, comparable statistics on a monthly basis. We acknowledge that work directly and without qualification.

We also thank the patient-advocacy organisations whose long-running campaigns for transparency in NHS performance data made the underlying open-data culture possible — including the King's Fund, the Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation, Healthwatch England, Age UK, and the patient-engagement teams at individual NHS Trusts.

Finally, we acknowledge the patients, GPs, and NHS staff who took the time to give early feedback on the site's framing. Their comments shaped both what we publish and how we explain it.

Press and citation

If you are quoting PlainNHS in journalism or research, please credit “PlainNHS, PlainNHS” with a link to the page you are citing. We are happy to confirm figures and methodology for journalists on deadline — email hello@plainnhs.co.uk with the URL and the figure you are checking.

Comments and reader feedback

We do not host comments on individual entity pages because we cannot moderate them at scale and we do not want to publish unverified anecdote alongside official NHS performance data. Feedback by email is welcome at hello@plainnhs.co.uk and is read every day.

Important disclaimer

This portal presents publicly available NHS performance data. It is not medical advice. Always consult your GP, NHS 111, or a qualified healthcare professional for medical decisions. Waiting-time figures are statistical aggregates and do not predict individual outcomes. Always confirm referral and pathway details with the treating NHS Trust.

Contact

Email hello@plainnhs.co.uk with corrections, questions, or feedback. We aim to respond within 72 hours.