London NHS hospitals bought £36m of services from US healthcare firm HCA last year
London NHS hospitals struggling to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic purchased £36m of cancer care, cardiology and other services directlyfrom the UK’s largest private healthcare group HCA last year.
Analysis of monthly public data from NHS trusts, published today by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI), reveals the extent to which London hospitals have become reliant on private providers, prompting concerns about creeping backdoor privatisation of the national health service.
“Covid has been very much used as a cover for shrinking NHS care and expanding private healthcare provision,” said Allyson Pollock, clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University and an honorary professor at University College London. She said the money would be better used to invest in NHS staffing, equipment and expansion.
This level of spending by individual NHS trusts is unprecedented for cancer care and cardiology, said CHPI.
The spending is over and above the £2bn so far handed over from central NHS budgets to private hospitals during the pandemic. In recent years, NHS hospitals have purchased extra capacity from private providers for simple procedures like hip and knee operations, but they have not previously spent large sums outsourcing more complex treatments.
HCA said its support had allowed 14,000 complex cardiac and cancer NHS patients to receive the care they needed. Many of them were casualties of the widespread suspension of normal care during the pandemic, as resources were diverted away from many specialisms, including cancer, to treat Covid-19 patients.
By outsourcing some of the most pressing cases on their backlog to HCA, trusts ensured that those most in need were cared for.
Prior to the pandemic, HCA
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