EXCLUSIVE
Private hospital’s £6m deal
BY PAUL HUTCHEON A PRIVATE hospital will be paid up to £6million for three months work – even though the NHS Louisa Jordan remains unused.
The deal will also see the taxpayer foot the bill for the rent at Spire Murrayfield in Edinburgh. Labour MSP Neil Findlay called for the facility to be nationalised.
When she was Health Secretary, Nicola Sturgeon signalled a move away from the NHS using private hospitals, saying they would only be used “at the margins”.
However, as a way of using capacity during the pandemic, NHS Scotland signed an agreement with Spire Healthcare for staff, facilities and equipment at the Murrayfield hospital.
The value of the contract to meet the extra demands of the health and social care sectors is £6million.
Critics have questioned whether this is necessary given the availability of a new hospital in Glasgow.
The £43million Louisa Jordan is a temporary emergency critical care hospital set up to deal with the pandemic.
It was planned to have an initial capacity of 300 beds and the capability of expanding to more than three times that number.
A fall in infection rates has meant the facility has not been required, but opposition politicians have said it should be used to address the backlog in operations and procedures.
Spire Healthcare reported pre-tax profits of £9.6million for 2019, while revenues grew to £980million.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “We are considering whether we could use the Louisa Jordan to do some elective treatments.
“The final cost of NHS patients being treated in private hospitals will be determined by factors including the number of beds reserved and the number of procedures.”