Tenth of elective operations done in private hospitals

Private hospitals are doing one in 10 of all planned NHS operations amid patients’ frustration at long delays in NHS care and political pressure to cut waiting times.

- Denis Campbell

New figures seen by the Guardian prompted campaigners to warn that the NHS is “allowing the private sector to make a killing” and is seeing more and more of its services “cannibalised” because years of underinvestment mean it can no longer provide care quickly.

The NHS in England outsourced 10% of all elective procedures such as hip and knee replacements to private operators for the first time during 2023, new figures showed. That proportion has shot up by almost 50% since before Covid, the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN) said.

Staffing problems and pressure to reduce the 7.6m-strong care backlog are increasingly forcing health service trusts to send patients on their waiting lists for private treatment.

The rise in NHS work done by private operators has prompted fears that more and more of the health service is being left weakened and patients’ access to vital care is increasingly a “two-tier system” dictated by their wealth.

The unprecedented transfer of NHS patients is happening at the same time as a dramatic increase in patients using either their own savings or private medical insurance to pay for treatment in the independent sector that the NHS cannot provide fast enough.

Private operators carried out 1.67m procedures on NHS patients in 2023 – the most ever – which the health service paid for as part of its “referral to treatment” (RTT) scheme. That was 29% more than the 1.3m they did during 2019, the IHPN’s latest internal briefing on activity levels showed.