Health and care data guide

Health and care covers three SIC divisions:

• 86 human health, including 86210 general medical practice and 86230 dental practice
• 87 residential care, including 87900 other residential care
• 88 social work without accommodation, including 88100 and 88910 child day care

A large part of this sector is not on the register at all, and that is the first thing to understand.

What is and is not a company

NHS trusts, NHS GP practices operating as partnerships, local authority social services: none of these are companies, and none appear. What does appear is the private and independent side, which is substantial: dental practices, private clinics, care homes, domiciliary care agencies, nurseries, and the groups that own them.

So a count of division 86 is a count of the corporate part of healthcare, not of healthcare.

Where the register earns its place

Care is consolidated, and the consolidation is deliberately hard to see.

A group operating twelve care homes will frequently hold each one in a separate company, sometimes with an operating company and a property company per site. From the outside each home looks independent. It has its own name, its own registration, its own front door.

The register is where that comes apart. Shared officers and shared people with significant control connect those companies to each other, and a group that is invisible on the ground is obvious once you follow the directors. Shared registered addresses do the same job.

If you need to know who actually owns a provider, or how large a group really is, this is the source and there is not an easy alternative.

What the register does not hold

The operational truth about a care provider lives elsewhere, and it matters more than the corporate record.

• CQC registration, ratings, inspection reports, service types and bed numbers. All of that is the Care Quality Commission, a separate register, and it is what tells you whether a provider is any good.
• NHS contracts, funding or patient numbers
• Clinical staff, qualifications or registrations
• Turnover and occupancy

Companies House gives you the entity. CQC gives you the service. Neither substitutes for the other, and for this sector you almost always want both.

What people in the sector actually do with it

• Build a provider list by SIC code and area, including the small independents
• Trace group structure through shared officers and control, to see who really owns what
• Find newly incorporated providers entering a market
• Check a provider's corporate age and status before contracting or partnering
• Track closures, which in care leaves identifiable gaps in local provision
• Size the independent provision in a catchment

Where to start

The health and care sector view covers divisions 86, 87 and 88 code by code, with formations and dissolutions.

If you need a cut that does not exist yet, tell us what it is.