NHS ‘goes private’ in bid to reduce record patient waiting lists

THE record number of patients on hospital waiting lists demands a ‘shared response’ involving private healthcare, according to a new plan.

NHS chiefs yesterday unveiled a strategy to outsource treatment to the independent sector, meaning patients’ entire treatment could be provided privately from the moment they leave their local GP practice.

Under the blueprint, private firms – as well as charities and other third parties – will be paid at NHS prices to deliver care to patients free of charge. It comes amid a drive to shorten the record waiting list of 7.47million patients – one in eight of the population – waiting to start routine hospital treatment. Plans were announced earlier this year to allow patients to switch to a private provider if they have waited more than nine months for a public appointment. But after announcing this week that eight of its 13 new diagnostic centres – providing extra scans, checks and tests – will be independently run, the Department of Health and Social Care yesterday published a plan on how it will make greater use of the private sector.

It includes transferring some patients to private providers for all of their treatment after leaving their GP. The current situation is that patients are referred to an NHS hospital or professional first and are only later moved to the private sector, which can mean repeating the same tests and explaining their symptoms all over again.

In a foreword to the plan, Will Quince, chairman of the Government’s elective recovery taskforce, said the NHS and private sector had met the ‘shared test’ of coronavirus with a ‘shared response’, as private providers stepped in to make sure people could continue to get nonCovid healthcare.

Referring to the continuing backlog of patients after the pandemic, Mr Quince said that this was ‘another shared test, that demanded another shared response’.

Helen Buckingham, director of strategy at the Nuffield Trust health think- tank, said collaboration between the NHS and the private sector is necessary, but added: ‘This scheme will need to be carefully designed to make sure that the NHS is not simply left with the most complex cases without the right staff or capacity to deal with them.’

Patients’ advocates sounded a positive note, despite concern from some quarters about greater involvement of the private sector in the NHS.

Rachel Power, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: ‘We believe that if patients receive safe, effective, compassionate care that is timely and free at the point of use, then who provides that care is a lesser issue than the millions of patients on waiting lists whose lives are on hold because of health conditions.’ The Government pledged to open 160 community diagnostic centres by 2030, and there are currently 114 operating. Private centres will operate similarly to their NHS counterparts, the Government said, but staff will be employed by private operators, which also own the buildings.

Sites in the South-West – in Redruth, Bristol, Torbay, Yeovil and Weston- super-Mare – will be operated by diagnostics company InHealth. Other private facilities will also be in Southend, Northampton and south Birmingham, joining four already operating in Brighton, north Solihull, Oxford and Salford.

Health minister Maria Caulfield told LBC that NHS waiting lists are likely to rise further in the coming months before reaching a peak, despite greater involvement of the private sector.

But, speaking to Sky News, she said taxpayers would still be getting ‘good value for money’ under the provider selection regime.

‘Millions whose lives are on hold’