Private hospitals to rescue NHS

This crisis will be made worse especially if the number of patients seeking the services of the NHS continues to rise as proposed by the Government’s under consideration plans to rely on private hospitals.

The £1 billion plan to tackle waiting list backlogs would mean the independent sector paying for the greatest extension of health in generations, perhaps since the time Sir Tony Blair was in number 10.

Hundreds of thousands of NHS patients would have their cancer checks, surgery and intensive care provided by private hospitals under plans put forward before Budget.

A source said that the Government would “welcome with open arms” any spare capacity to ensure that the patients of the NHS receive their treatment sooner rather than later.

The NHS has been appealing for more funding before the Budget on Oct 30, but his first speech as Health secretary Sir Wes Streeting promised to bid farewell to “the begging bowl philanthropy culture in which the only time the Treasury engages with the Department of Health is when it tells it what it requires more money for X Y and Z”.

Company, submitted by private hospitals, under the plans the independent sector could see up to 2,5 mln more patients some of the treatment can start within weeks.

The private sector investment would be utilized to establish more a chain of diagnostic centres to support NHS patients throughout England to deal with the delays in diagnosing cancer and to create new surgery facilities and intensive care units.

It emerges as waiting lists for treatment in England have soared to 7.64m, while there are fears that the NHS this year is ‘teetering on the edge of collapse’ as winter sets in. Speaking in April after the Labour party’s win, Mr Streeting declared the NHS as ‘broken’. Since then, waiting lists have increased while punctual volumes were not effectively progressed, specifically in promises to deliver an extra 40,000 appointments.

The Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), which includes Bupa, the Circle Health Group and Care UK among its members has warned that £1bn of private sector capacity is ready to be invested in new facilities for NHS patients.

Mr Streeting is widely believed to be very interested in the proposals which would have the private sector pledging further large scale growth, employing its people and premises current and new respectively.

Before the election Mr Streeting argued a new Government would ‘out-Howsam’ New Labour in terms of the private sector for NHS patients.

‘If you want to know how my heart yearns for reform think New Labour on steroids,’ he told a conference in May.

The scale of the expansion being considered is also much larger than even the Blair government where the use of private was first introduced by the NHS.

During 2003 – 2010, under Sir Tony and Gordon Brown, the Labour government was paying 30 private clinics for operations and tests for its NHS patients.

It also brought in patient choice, enabling patients to choose to be treated at a private hospital but the drive polarised the party and petered out.

These new plans under discussion with the independent sector would liberally extend this, private companies being offered the opportunity to bid for a larger slice of the market.

Hear follows an independent report into the NHS by Lord Darzi, which last month said it was “starved” of capital, something which is hurting its productivity due to inadequate levels of diagnostic equipment, beds and facilities.

In the plans, private facilities were to fund the growth of the health service.

Over the next year, existing capacity would free up around 1m appointments for NHS patients at private units within weeks.

Moreover, additional 1.5 million operations and appointments would be delivered by new and extended facilities which may start being deployed in several months.

2.5 extra million patients treated privately

This would mean an increase in approximately 7.5 million patients within a year, being treated by private hospitals while being an NHS patient, from the current number of approximately 5 million.

In the letter to Rachel Reeves and Mr Streeting, chair and chief executive of the IHPN, David Hare said that the proposed investments would mean new facilities could be deployed within few months and staffed without recruiting staff from the NHS.

The network said that the providers would hire more staff from overseas and those who have resigned from the NHS, and there would also be a pre-service training where some of the staff would be trained through apprenticeship programs.

Prior practice that uses independent hospitals has been made in but limited categories of procedures which include cataracts, hip and knee operations among others.

However, the new plans would mean independent hospitals would increase capacity, some even constructed intensive care unit to take on diversified caseloads.

In the current scenario, only fifteen percent of the private hospitals have such facilities and they cannot safely admit the more complex cases.

The proposals would also result in a new round of expensive community diagnostic centres for diseases like cancer, that would only serve the NHS, but are operated by the private sector.

‘We want to sustain it if we can, and if the market turns improvement sour, we’re saying, mate, we want to grab it with both hands’.

The plans are designed to help to solve short-term difficulties the health service might face, with capabilities which can be created during the next year.

The IHPN stated that more than £1 billion of private sector capital could be directed for the care of patients in need of NHS treatment – on a contractual basis.

A Government source said: “If there is any possible additional capacity to help to lever down the waiting lists faster and to treat more of the NHS patients, we would sure want to grab them with both our hands.”

Mr Hare told The Telegraph: “Labour downloaded the latest NHS waiting times by making good use of available private sector paid at NHS prices and by asking the private sector to invest on fresh surgical and diagnosing resilient services.

“In the current situation where the NHS waiting list is at record level and the government treasury is under pressure, the up coming Budget is an opportunity for the government agrees and put its pre-election promises of partnering with the private sector in the long term to leverage the capital, capacity and capability in the sector to enhance services to NHS patient.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “This government will not let the founding principles of the NHS, which is a free service at the point of delivery, to change at all.

“Where there are spare private sector facilities that can take patients of a manner where, for the use of the service, they come to the NHS for free, then yes, we will use those facilities to reduce waiting lists.”