Acute hospitals

Non-specialist acute hospitals

The CQC classifies hospitals as either non-specialist or specialist. As well as rating organisations for their overall quality, the CQC rates specific core services.

Non-specialist hospitals typically provide a range of services such as orthopaedics, general surgery and ophthalmology, with some providing medical care. These are often what people picture when thinking about a typical hospital.

455 independent non-specialist hospitals run by 220 provider groups have been rated by the CQC, compared to 291 NHS non-specialist hospitals run by 121 NHS trusts. Of these, 420 independent sites (92%) have good or outstanding overall ratings, compared to 137 NHS hospitals (47%).

NHS trusts are typically rated at provider level as well as at hospital level, whereas independent providers are usually only rated at hospital (location) level. For this reason, we have used location-level comparisons for context in this report. Where we have done this, we have checked that provider-level ratings for NHS organisations are broadly in line with the location-level figures referenced in this report. For example, the percentage of provider-level good or outstanding ratings for NHS acute non-specialist hospitals is 47%.

Looking at CQC ratings of non-specialist acute hospitals since 2018 when the CQC published its analysis of the state of care in independent acute hospitals, we see a notable improvement trend among independent providers as shown below:

This shows how the proportion of independent providers with an overall rating of either inadequate or requires improvement decreased from around 30% at the beginning of 2018 to under 8% at the end of 2025. Conversely, the proportion of locations with good or outstanding ratings increased from 70% to over 92%.

Over that time the number of independent sector acute non-specialist hospitals rated by the CQC more than doubled from just over 200 to 455.

Although many NHS trusts provide treatment to privately funded patients through their Private Patient Units, these units are not usually rated by the CQC.

Specialist acute hospitals

Specialist hospitals usually focus on a single speciality, for example ophthalmic or termination of pregnancy services.

There are many more independent specialist hospitals rated by the CQC (472 run by 305 provider groups) than NHS specialist hospitals (37 run by 27 NHS trusts). Such imbalanced numbers make like-for-like comparisons difficult. However, we can see that over 80% of services in both sectors are rated either good or outstanding.

The number of independent specialist acute hospitals rated by the CQC has grown considerably since 2018, from under 20 in early 2018 to 504 in 2025. The total number registered (including those without ratings) is above 1,000. This significant change in the number of locations with ratings makes it difficult to make judgements about trends in quality over that period in a similar way to non-specialist hospitals.