Healthcare: Could the private sector help Keir Starmer cut NHS waiting lists?
Plans for a “new agreement” to more closely link the NHS and the private healthcare sector have been unveiled today in a bid to slash waiting lists for patients.
The National Health Service (NHS) and the independent sector have struck a new deal which ministers say will improve patient choice as part of plans to end the health backlog.
The NHS and Independent Sector Partnership Agreement will see patients offered a wider choice of providers for tests or scans – including private care – paid for by the NHS.
This will focus on certain specialist treatment areas – including orthopaedics and gynaecology, which face long waiting lists – and in more deprived areas of the country.
Some 260,000 women are waiting more than 18 weeks for gynaecology treatment, while more than 40 per cent of orthopaedics patients wait longer than the 18-week target.
Under the deal, the independent sector has been told it must review its “clinical exclusion criteria” to ensure as “broad a cohort of patients as possible” can be treated privately, with an additional one million appointments a year expected to be delivered for NHS patients.
By March 2027, the NHS App will also be “significantly expanded to improve information for patients in elective care”, while the app and Manage Your Referral website will become the “default route” by which patients choose where they wish to be treated.
It comes as the Prime Minister today unveiled a new plan to cut waiting lists of patients who see treatment delayed beyond 18 weeks by nearly half a million in the next year.
Community diagnostic centres and surgical hubs will expand access, while Keir Starmer insisted the NHS must be “hungry for innovation” but cannot become a “national money pit”.
On the private sector deal, Starmer pledged his government’s “approach must be totally unburdened by dogma”, and welcomed moves to “make the spaces, facilities and resources of private hospitals more readily available to the NHS”.
“Change is urgent”
He added: “I know some people won’t like this, but I make no apologies. Change is urgent.
“I’m not interested in putting ideology before patients and I’m not interested in moving at the pace of excuses.”
Before Christmas, the government outlined its aim to “meet the NHS standard of 92 per cent of patients in England waiting no longer than 18 weeks for elective treatment” as one of its ‘milestones’ to delivering Starmers ‘five missions’ – which has not been met since 2015.
Health secretary Wes Streeting added: “I’m not going to allow working people to wait longer than is necessary, when we can get them treated sooner in a private hospital, paid for by the NHS. If the wealthy can be treated on time, then so should NHS patients.”
NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said: “This new agreement will enable the NHS to make better use of capacity within the private sector where it is needed most, and help us see more patients, free at the point of use.”
And David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), added: “Independent providers already treat millions of NHS patients every year.
“This agreement builds on these strong foundations by making full use of existing capacity, ensuring that patients are offered proper choice of provider as well as supporting the sector to invest in, and deliver, an even wider choice of high quality services to NHS patients.”