NHS privatisation 'has led to decline in quality of care'

Increased privatisation of NHS services has led to a decline in the quality of healthcare and increased rates of deaths from treatable causes, researchers say.

- ELLA PICKOVER

Academics said that avoidable deaths increased as more private services were used. They estimated that 557 additional deaths between 2014 and 2020 might be attributed to changes in outsourcing.

The study, published in The Lancet Public Health, examined the impact of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 in England, which "intensified pressures on the NHS to outsource service provision from state-owned providers to private for-profit providers".

The researchers from the University of Oxford examined how much each regional health body spent on outsourcing between 2013 and 2020. They also looked at levels of "treatable mortality" - or deaths which could have been avoided with timely and appropriate healthcare.