NHS operations carried out in private hospitals on the rise under the SNP
Almost 70,000 Scottish NHS operations have been carried out in private hospitals since the SNP came to power, prompting claims of “startling hypocrisy” by opposition parties.
Nicola Sturgeon had pledged to keep private sector involvement “at the margins” of the NHS, but numbers soared from 2,707 when the SNP came to power to 4,360 last year.
Numbers peaked at 10,420 in 2014 and, after a steep decline in 2016, numbers rose again last year, according to figures obtained by the Scottish Conservatives.
Since 2007, 68,175 Nhs-funded operations have been carried out by the independent sector in Scotland – an average of almost 6,000 a year since the SNP took office.
The number of operations peaked between 2013 and 2016 when they hovered around the 10,000 mark.
But they have fallen away since then as the government struggled with hospital waiting times.
Health secretary Jeane Freeman is now facing calls to utilise the sector further for the benefit of patients. Scottish Conservatives health spokesman Miles Briggs said: “These figures show that the independent sector has been propping up the SNP’S health service for years.
“That makes the SNP’S position on the matter totally insincere and illogical – the Nationalists are guilty of startling hypocrisy.
“Even with the independent sector bailing them out, the SNP’S mismanagement of the health service is causing patients to suffer unnecessarily.”
A spokesperson for Jeane Freeman said: “This is desperate stuff from a Scottish Tory party whose tax plans would slash more than half a billion pounds from Scotland’s NHS.
“The reality is the 68,000 figure is a small fraction of the 12 million procedures carried out over the same period.”