‘More money paid to private firms to carry out NHS work’
THE amount of money health boards pay private companies to carry out NHS work has dramatically increased since the start of the decade, it has been revealed.
Annual accounts from each of Wales’ seven health boards show that £38.5m was spent on outsourcing to private-sector healthcare providers in 2017-18.
That was a 260% rise compared with the £13.8m spent in 2010-11, but a slight decrease on the £39.1m recorded in 2016-17.
Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (UHB) spent the most on private companies in 2017-18 (£12.7m) followed by Cwm Taf UHB (£7.7m) and Hywel Dda UHB (£6.4m).
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, speaking in the Senedd on Tuesday, criticised the Welsh Government for having a “policy of privatisation”.
Addressing the leader of the house, Labour’s Julie James AM, he said: “Isn’t this a policy of privatisation by stealth as a sticking plaster to mask long-term structural problems within the Welsh NHS?
“A sustainable NHS requires longterm planning, training the workforce and buying the equipment needed so you have capacity to meet demands in the future.
“The policy of the Welsh Government when Carwyn Jones first became First Minister was to phase out the use of the private sector completely by 2011 but spending on use of the private sector has gone up substantially on your government’s watch.
“The Labour Party in England under Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to end the use of private-sector provision in the NHS. Isn’t this yet another case of Labour saying one thing in opposition at Westminster and doing the opposite in government here in Wales?
“But Jeremy Corbyn aside, aren’t you reneging on Bevan’s vision and your own values?”
While Ms James strongly denied that the Welsh Government was operating privatisation by stealth, she admitted that private-sector providers were used in the short term “to fill off service difficulties”.
She said: “We have to arrange for services to be delivered in the best possible fashion. Where possible we deliver it by public sector free at the point of delivery, but clearly there are some instances where we have to use private-sector providers in the short term in order to make sure the service is delivered.
“There is clearly not a route to fullscale privatisation. We are training the largest numbers of staff we can into the biggest number of training places we have ever had in order to fill that off.”
The One Wales agreement in 2007 set out a commitment to eliminate the use of the private sector to deliver NHS treatment in Wales by 2011.
But despite this, health boards continue to use private companies on a regular basis to reduce waiting-times for patients and ease pressures on their own staff.
Earlier this year, Cardiff and Vale UHB used a private firm, called Strategic Healthcare Solutions (SHS), to help with a backlog of cataracts operations at the University Hospital of Wales (UHW).
However, 139 patients were contacted after some experienced complications from the procedures.
Appointment targets are currently being met in radiology, which Mr Price claims is down to health boards increasingly outsourcing to the private sector.
But according to a report by the Auditor General for Wales, Adrian Crompton, patients are continuing to face unacceptable waits for follow-up appointments despite this reliance on the private sector.
Currently 375,000 patients in Wales are currently experiencing delays in receiving their follow-up appointment – a rise of 12% in the last three years.
Helen Whyley, interim director of the Royal College of Nursing in Wales, said NHS outsourcing to private companies was sometimes necessary.
She said: “The NHS in Wales has a duty of care to its patients. It has proven difficult to juggle the demands of reducing waiting-times for elective services while providing acute and emergency care.
“Sometimes it may be imperative to outsource care in a timely fashion.
“It is not realistic to believe that a single system can be responsible for the provision of all healthcare, nor can any one model accommodate the pressures of technological development and resources and patient demand.
“Where the private sector has underused facilities, collaboration between public and private healthcare providers can serve the needs of the population of Wales.
“RCN Wales members expect to see due diligence by health boards and trusts to ensure they are getting the best value for money with their contracts in the private sector.”