One in five NHS operations outsourced to private sector

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One in five NHS operations is now outsourced to the private sector, official figures show.

Since the pandemic, the health service has sent increasing numbers of patients to independent hospitals as part of efforts to clear a waiting list of more than seven million.

The new analysis shows that in the last quarter, 18 per cent of NHS operations carried out on admitted patients were performed by private hospitals.

The figure is a rise from 12 per cent when data began being collected in 2019.

The data shows that waiting times for NHS treatment are far shorter for those who are sent for treatment by private hospitals.

Patients sent to independent providers had waited an average of under 13 weeks, compared with an average of 18 weeks for those seen by NHS providers.

Labour has said it will increase use of the private sector to clear backlogs.

In recent months patients facing the longest waits have increasingly been given the option to be treated at an alternative provider, including a private option.

The figures show more than 725,000 people were taken off the NHS waiting list after receiving treatment at an independent provider in the first five months of this year.

They include more than 280,000 operations performed in private hospitals, while 1.25 million were carried out in NHS facilities.

The quarterly NHS data analysis from the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN) shows the private sector on average delivering more than 100,000 patient care episodes per week so far in 2024.

This is an increase of around one-third since January 2021.

Ophthalmology – particularly cataract operations – and orthopaedics, which covers hip and knee surgery, have seen some of the biggest increases in NHS activity in the private sector.

Data from May shows that the number of procedures for ophthalmology has risen by 190 per cent since 2019.

As a result, ophthalmology has become the only major specialty where median NHS waiting times are now lower than before the pandemic.

Meanwhile, trauma and orthopaedics activity was up by over one-fifth compared with the same month in 2019.

David Hare, the chief executive of IHPN, said: “This latest data shows the positive impact independent providers are having on both patients themselves and the wider NHS recovery, taking over a month off the average patient waiting time and removing almost three-quarters of a million people from the total waiting list in the first half of 2024 alone, with treatment delivered free at the point of use to NHS patients.

“The new Government has been clear that the independent sector is an important part of helping to get NHS waiting times down for patients and there is a real commitment from the sector to ensuring that the capacity and contribution that the sector makes is scaled up over the months and years ahead, building on the good progress highlighted in our most recent quarterly data.”

In the run-up to the election, Wes Streeting, now the Health Secretary, said a Labour government would buy up private beds for the NHS, in defiance of objections from “middle-class Lefties”.

Mr Streeting said the health service would buy thousands of beds from care homes to “unblock” a failing health and care system while expanding the use of private hospitals for state-funded operations.

The MP hit out at critics, saying the use of the private sector by the state was key to rapidly expanding the capacity of the health service.

He said it would be the “driving mission” of a Labour government to “end the injustice of the two-tier healthcare system” by increasing state use of the private sector.

“We will use spare capacity in the private sector because there’s nothing Left-wing about leaving hospital beds to lie empty while working-class patients lie in pain,” he said.

I recently needed emergency surgery. It was done by the NHS itself and I waited one day (I needed to be “nil by mouth”).

The staff were great, the treatment was great, I love the NHS. That is all.

Nothing wrong with that. I had one of my cataract ops done privately with the NHS paying. AIUI the private company were paid what the surgery would have cost the NHS. They made a profit by having fewer staff (less than half, do the NHS really need to employ a nurse to deliver tea and toast to waiting patients?) and much, much faster patient turnover. They had a cool robot which got the surgery time down to 6-7 minutes.

For the NHS surgery I was in the hospital for over seven hours as everyone was booked in for the same time slot and had to wait as the surgeries were done one by one. The private company used an assembly line approach so at any one time there’d be one patient checking in, one in surgery and one in post op, collecting their eye drops and whatever. I was out in around an hour.

It will blow your minds when you learn how France, Germany and every other developed country have better healthcare systems than ours

If I get treated quicker, for free and the doctors and nurses are paid more then what is the problem?