NHS could pay for 250,000 patients waiting too long for surgery to receive treatment at private hospitals under new rules
- The NHS could start offering to send long-wait patients to private hospitals
- More than 250,000 patients waited for more than 26 weeks last year
- Proposal comes as the NHS waiting list is the second longest it has ever been
A quarter of a million more people each year could be sent to private hospitals paid for by the NHS under new plans to cut waiting times.
Health service bosses will trial an option for patients to have private treatment if they have been kept waiting more than six-and-a-half months.
Based on the number of people who waited longer than 26 weeks for non-urgent care last year, this could affect hundreds of thousands of patients.
The move is a bid to cut down the NHS waiting list which, in England, is around the longest it has ever been at more than four million people.
Hospitals strapped for cash and staff are simply unable to clear the backlog of patients needing hospital care and thousands waiting more than a year to get it.
The NHS waiting list for non-urgent treatment is at its second-longest ever, with 4.16million people waiting, second only to 4.18m in October last year
Under proposed new NHS plans patients left waiting for 26 weeks or more for non- urgent care, such as joint replacement ops, could be offered private treatment.
Around 10,000 and 25,000 people per month meet these criteria, the Health Service Journal reports.
Although the NHS aims to treat people within 18 weeks (4.5 months), the average wait is just under 23 weeks.
If the policy changes it could be a big financial boost for private health companies.
A hip replacement, for example, costs upwards of £10,000 per patient, according to BMI Healthcare.
The Indpendent Healthcare Providers Network, an organisation which represents private hospitals, confirmed it has enough space to take on NHS patients.
But patients would still be able to continue waiting for the NHS if they’d rather – the new rule would simply be there to make sure they have options.
They could choose to be referred to a different NHS hospital or continue waiting.
The IHPN’s chief executive, David Hare, told the HSJ: ‘The 18-week target should still be the default, however, and it is important to note that a wait of over six months is still far too long for the vast majority of patients.
‘What needs to happen for this new right to be effective is a proper national approach to identifying spare capacity and making patients aware of their options well before they hit 26 weeks.
‘Patients may then choose to remain with their existing hospital, go to another NHS trust, or go to an independent sector provider – this isn’t about simply moving patients into the independent sector.’
The most recent NHS data, for January, showed there were 4.16million people on the NHS waiting list.
This is the second highest number ever, fewer only than 4.18m in October last year.
More than half a million (552,219) of those people had been waiting for more than 18 weeks, and 2,157 had been waiting for more than a year.
The Royal College of Surgeons this month warned hospitals need to take ‘urgent action’ to clear the backlog of patients needing surgery.
The charity said 227,569 people have been waiting more than six months for treatment.
The RCS’s president, Professor Derek Alderson said: ‘The backlog of patients waiting to start treatment continues to grow.
‘There are now over 100,000 more patients waiting longer than 18 weeks to start treatment when compared with the same time last year.
‘With the worst of winter now hopefully behind us, there is an urgent need for a plan to deal with the increasing backlog of patients on the planned care waiting list and we will work with NHS England to bring this about.’