Private beds stayed empty for Covid

Just eight coronavirus patients a day were treated in non-nhs hospitals after government deal

PRIVATE hospitals treated just eight Covid patients a day despite receiving millions from the taxpayer to support the NHS on the pandemic front line, a report has revealed.

In contrast, the NHS cared for a daily average of almost 10,000 Covid patients between March 2020 and 2021.

At the start of the pandemic, the Government signed a contract to blockbook almost 8,000 beds in England’s 187 private hospitals. The cost of the deal has never been revealed, but is believed to be around £400million a month, according to an estimate cited by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) report.

This puts the cost per Covid patient treated in private hospitals at about £1.6million.it was the first time such a deal had been brokered between NHS England and the private sector and was done to provide extra resources to stop the NHS being overwhelmed.

But the CHPI report revealed private hospitals only provided around 3,000 of the 3.6 million Covid-bed days during the first year of the pandemic.

“Seemingly large – but as yet undisclosed – sums of public funds were used to buy additional healthcare capacity at a time when the NHS was being overwhelmed and when NHS waiting times were rising,” the authors said.

“But much of this purchased capacity appears to have been underused.”

Private and NHS hospitals reported the number of beds occupied by Covid patients each morning in the Covid Situation Report. The CHPI calculated that on 39 per cent of days between March 20, 2020 and March 26, 2021 no private bed was occupied by a Covid patient. On 20 per cent of days, only one bed was occupied.

As part of the government deal, more than 10,000 nurses, 700 doctors and 8,000 clinical staff were expected to be made available to treat Covid patients.

One reason for private hospitals being underused is that many NHS doctors work in private hospitals during their non-nhs hours, the report said, and many were putting in extra shifts at their public hospitals. “[They] may also have been reluctant to provide nonurgent care in private hospitals while their NHS colleagues were being overwhelmed by the influx of Covid patients,” it added.

A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “The primary aim of the independent sector deal was to treat non-covid-19 patients, providing urgent cancer services and other life-saving treatments.

“These contracts, provided at cost on a non-profit basis, enabled the provision of nearly 1,200 ventilators, more than 10,000 nurses, over 700 doctors and over 8,000 other clinical staff across England, as well as around 2 million consultations, tests, operations and chemotherapy sessions for NHS patients between March and the end of 2020.”