Two of the country’s biggest private medical insurers have told Health & Protection they have been unaffected by the worsening blood test tube shortage hitting the NHS.
However, Square Health branded NHS England’s inability to effectively manage supplies of blood test tubes as “unfathomable”.
The health screening provider told Health & Protection it could not believe there had been no effective stock management or reserves, but said its own supplies were in good order.
“There appears to be over reliance on a single manufacturer [in the NHS], which now says that under an ‘exceptional use authorisation’ it will import nine million alternative tubes and expects the situation to stabilise through September,” the firm said.
“Square Health has not been impacted and our laboratory partners have reserves which will last well into the New Year.”
Insurers also appear to be confident that the shortage will have minimal impact on their customers.
Aviva told Health & Protection: “Given that private medical insurance (PMI) is largely dealing with acute conditions that need treatment in a secondary care setting as opposed to management of chronic conditions or screening we do not believe the blood test tube shortage will have an immediate effect on our customers.
“We also believe any impact will be minimal regarding the digital GP offering for our PMI customers and Digicare+ health check for our individual and group protection customers.
“We will be monitoring this through liaising with our customer teams and our suppliers,” it added.
An Axa Health spokesperson revealed the insurer is also monitoring the situation closely, but highlighted that to date, it has not seen delays to members getting blood tests.
Earlier this week, Health & Protection reported that the British Medical Association (BMA) had issued a warning that doctors will soon have to make very difficult choices around which patients get blood tests and which do not due to the shortage of the blood test tubes.
The BMA described the ongoing shortage of blood tubes across hospitals and GP surgeries as severe with supplies in a “very perilous” situation and warned that if the NHS does not reduce the volume of tubes being used in the coming days, even the most clinically important blood tests may be at risk.
