Two-thirds of private hospital beds block-purchased by the NHS over the summer to deal with the coronavirus pandemic were left empty, it has been claimed, as waiting lists for routine procedures soared.
Internal documents seen by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) suggest that hundreds of millions of pounds were spent on private hospital capacity, only for that space not to be used as officials kept it back in the event of an avalanche of coronavirus patients that never materialised.
Critics say the strategy means that those patients waiting for routine procedures paid for by the NHS but carried out in private and independent sector facilities did not get the treatment that was readily available.
At a political level, critics say that the private healthcare sector has profited from the strategy, although others say that the under-utilisation is the fault of NHS care commissioners.
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the NHS has had unprecedented block contracts in place for almost all the private hospital capacity in England.
It is estimated that the contracts have been worth around £400m to the private sector.
The contracts were welcomed by the independent sector, which saw a substantial drop in patients seeking private care at the start of the pandemic.
But individuals with private medical insurance have had to delay their treatment, at a reputational cost to insurers who have been faced to offer rebates to them.
The documents seen by HSJ detail how much capacity private providers said they had and how much was used across day cases – operations not requiring an overnight stay – diagnostic tests, and outpatient appointments.
The leaked figures suggest only around a third of the capacity on offer from the providers in these categories was used between June and the end of September.
The Independent Healthcare Provider Network, which represents private providers, said in a statement: “Where utilisation by the local NHS has been poor, independent sector providers have pro-actively raised that with those systems and where needed up through the regional and national NHS England teams.”
It said private providers have hit or exceeded the “vast majority of activity expectations” set by the NHS, while any profits that were made were returned under the terms of the contract.
A spokesman for NHS England said: “Independent hospitals’ NHS funded elective activity has substantially increased during the autumn.”
The NHS England spokesman also indicated that in September the private sector was carrying out a large amount of appointments.
The HSJ analysis is available here.
