On this website, you'll see mentions of 'providers' – these are the people, partnerships and organisations that run the care services you use.
In many cases, you may not be aware of who the provider of the service you use is while in others, it's probably the name you know.
For example, most people know the name of their local hospital (a 'location') but they may not all be aware of the NHS trust that runs it. Similarly, you probably know the name of the dental practice you use but it's likely to be run by a partnership which may be named differently.
Conversely, with some services such as home care agencies, the name by which you know it will usually be the provider's.
Why do I need to know?
Understanding who provides your care services can help you use the information on this website as it is against providers that we take action.
This means some of the information we publish (for example, our Hospital Intelligent Monitoring or our Surveys) is done so against the provider. This is more common in the NHS than other sectors.
In some sectors, we'll be rating providers as well as, or instead of, locations under our new way of inspecting.
See also
You can also find out more by reading our page About locations.