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Surge In Private Healthcare.
NHS-Reform Or Die.
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I don't blame people for wanting to jump the queue. If you are in pain, you want that pain to stop as soon as possible.
But the problem is this. Every 1000 people getting private treatment from health professionals. Is 1000 people not getting treated in the queue. Making the queue wait longer.
We are not talking about elective surgery here. If the wealthier want to jump those queues, good luck to them.
Chemotherapy. Colonoscopy. Hip replacement.
We either have a National Health Service. Or we do not. If there is a two-tier service for essential health, then there is no point in the ordinary working man each pouring £thousands into a supposed "National" Health Service..
I suppose that depends on how much you pay.
Even if you have a private policy, I suppose you still have to rely on the NHS for some care.
Wouldnt you still be stuck waiting in A&E, or for an ambulance in the case of an emergency, and try to get an appointment with your GP?
My Dad had his knees done privately, because he didnt want to wait for the NHS to do them, as he was in pain.
That is nearly £3,000 for every man, woman and child. Or £6,000 for every taxpayer in the UK.
Of course people get important benefits for that.
But exactly how much should we be treated as 2nd class citizens in relation to healthcare?
1 simple example. If someone sees a specialist early for a consultation that leads to massive NHS care costs, why should that person get NHS treatment for free, and ahead of the person who didn't queue jump to start with?
Health Insurance provides a lot of benefits. But a lot of them are paid for by the people who suffer longer as a result.
I am not following your argument.
In the case of my Dad.
He needded two kneecaps.
The NHS said they would do them in 18 months.
He didnt want to wait 18 months because he was in pain.
So he went private.
Therefore surely creating a space in the NHS queue.
The same Doctor. Usually with the same staff.
Every NHS Hospital has less Doctors. Working, on average, less hours-except for the "Temps" on 3 times the Wage, naturally. Because they also undertake Private work.
Why do you think the queues have risen so dramatically?
Not knocking your Dad. He concentrates on what his best for him. So would I.
But every person "saving" that 18 months leads to the rest of the queue waiting an additional 18 months.
That is why the queues are at record levels.
Lots of important, life-changing or life-limiting conditions have targets for assessment and treatment. Pretty much all of which are being missed.
Rather than dealing with a specific illness, let's use a general example.
Suppose there are targets for assessment and treatment of a major illness of 6 months for assessment and 12 months (6 + 6 months) for treatment.
Someone paying for a lower level of private cover, will often be seen within 1 month for assessment. And then get transferred to the 2nd 6 month waiting list in the NHS.
He gets seen and treated in about 7 months. While the rest do not meet their target of 12 months. The Insurer only pays for a small fraction of that total cost.
Surely it should either be the case that the Insurer pays for the treatment or their Insured goes into the 12 month queue-like everyone else?
Maybe I am just a bit simple.
You would think that if the NHS had a queue of 100 people for a particular operation, and all of them went private, then the NHS would have no queue, and this would surely benefit the next person to come along, who would get their operation quicker as there would be no queue.
In the same way.
If a surgeon has an employment contract with the NHS, and also works in the private sector.
Providing he fulfills his commitment to the NHS, then any operations he conducts in the private sector will not affect any NHS queue.
Your arguments have a certain logic to them. It's just that they do not apply here. For a variety of reasons-1 of which is that 1 of the 2 healthcare providers is a £180,000,000,000 per annum behemoth that has no profit motive and precious little clear guideline relating to value for money (its solution always being "give us more money") against smaller healthcare providers who have duties to make profit.
Rather than your example, there are typically 10,000 people in a queue for a particular operation, and 100 of those choose to go private. The Private Healthcare provider then employs an NHS Doctor to work part-time or full-time for them, and the NHS Dr reduces his NHS hours.
I'm not knocking the thousands of great Staff in the NHS. Nor am I criticising them taking the extra money in this way. There is a major difference in the role of non-clinical Staff-in the Private sector they have clear profit incentives.
As a nation, we are the only major country to have a National Health Service. We spend more on it than any other country. Yet our clinical outcomes are consistently below that of all comparable nations. Look at Cancer survival rates as an example.
There can only be 2 logical reasons for that. Either our Staff are not as good as every comparable nation, or we are not spending our money wisely. And I do not believe it is the 1st one
They are putting many of the queues down to the pandemic.
The average wait for a knee replacement today is 35 weeks, so still nearly 9 months.
It is difficult to wait that long if you are in pain through just walking.
If they could have done them quicker for my Dad, he would have saved 7 or 8k.
When the NHS contract out to the private sector for an operation, they will apparently only pay what it costs them.
So they could reduce queues at no extra cost.
Although I do realise that conducting more operations than they would usually do, does in itself incur an extra cost.
Let's use your contracting out example. The NHS has lots and lots of fixed costs-most of their wage bill, hospitals and so on. That the taxpayer pays for.
When the NHS say "what it costs them" they only mean the profit element. The costs are still massive. Because they will be billed in relation to the cost of building/maintaining the facilities, paying the Medical staff at the (usually higher) private rate, paying the aftercare costs. Ever wondered why the NHS never says how much this all actually costs? Because it is a massive number-not "no extra cost". That is what they want you to think.
PS. The pandemic is not irrelevant. It was (and is) part of the problem. But the queues were massive before it happened.
If the NHS managed their staff properly, and surgeons fulfilled their contractual hours.
Then any operations that they carried out in the private sector, would be extra, and not affect NHS waiting lists.
NHS to expand use of private sector to tackle waits
The use of the private sector to tackle the NHS backlog in England is to be expanded, the government says.
Ministers say they want to unlock spare capacity to get more people the treatment and operations they need.
This includes opening eight privately-run diagnostic centres and using new rules to make it easier for the NHS to purchase care in the private sector.
Ministers are hoping a relaxation of the rules governing the award of contracts by the NHS will create more flexibility for local health bosses to use the private sector when needed.
Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said the government should have acted sooner to make more use of the private sector.
In these circumstances, the private sector is asked to do the work at NHS prices.
NHS waits force patients to pay for private ops 22 July 2022
Long NHS waiting times appear to be pushing people into paying thousands of pounds for private treatment.
There were 69,000 self-funded treatments in the UK in the final three months of last year - a 39% rise on the same period before the pandemic.
Experts said it was a sign of how desperate people had become.
The BBC has seen evidence of people taking out loans and resorting to crowdfunding to pay for private treatment.
The figures from the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) do not include those who have private insurance - instead they are the people paying the full cost of treatment themselves, leaving them liable for huge bills.
The numbers paying for care topped 250,000 last year.
For common operations like hip and knee replacements, the costs can top £15,000.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-62042465
Endometriosis: Credit card to pay for surgery after 23 years in pain
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62169492
Private surgery: what you need to know
Find out how much private operations typically cost in the UK, and how going private works vs the NHS
https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/private-healthcare/article/private-surgery-what-to-know-aEBlD9W36qFr
Private hospitals overtake NHS for hip and knee replacements
More people are paying for the operations for the first time since they were widely introduced in the 1960s and ’70s
Private hospitals are delivering more hip and knee replacements than the NHS for the first time since the procedures were widely introduced in the 1960s and 1970s.
https://www.ft.com/content/e9ac6302-f000-4c7a-a7ad-1094c130625a
Wes Streeting is quite rare for a Health Minister-he genuinely cares, and wants to make a difference. But that does not mean that he does not come out with utter cobblers from time to time.
Let's start with the obvious. An organisation costing us £160 Billion annually believes the solution is spare capacity in Private Companies that are a tiny fraction of its size, with a tiny fraction of its resources.
Then there is my favourite sentence:-
"In these circumstances, the private sector is asked to do the work at NHS prices."
Key words-"asked" and "prices". Relying on the supposed generosity of commercial for-profit companies, in relation to imaginary prices provided by someone who has no profit motive. Ever seen the "cost" of NHS ops? No? Nor me. Good luck with that.
Might as well call it by its real name. It is a Private Finance Initiative. They've worked well. Or, rather, they have worked really well for Capita and the likes-just not so well for the taxpayer.
Diagnostic centres? That is box-ticking. Remove the cheap bottleneck pressure. To increase the really expensive one. Because the really expensive parts are treatment and aftercare-not diagnosis.
We have an enormously expensive National Health Service. Whereas it is increasingly being marginalised for all non-emergency care. It is organised by a massive army of non-clinical staff. Failed to keep pace with the ever-increasing demands of modern medicine.
It needs radical reform from within the NHS. Or it will cease to exist in its current form.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/gps-average-26-hours-week-052200250.html
1. Compare/contrast with another profession-Solicitors. When I started out in Law, the World was a different place. Simpler. Less complex systems, from the amount of development to the resources available. Back then, most solicitors either dealt with everything, or dealt with massive chunks of it.
People were experts in Litigation (all of it) or Property Law (Conveyancing, Landlord & Tenant, Commercial). No longer. I think we can all agree that Solicitors don't lack in self-confidence (bordering on arrogance). But those days are gone. You can no longer be a specialist in such broad areas. Hence the old legal joke that progression is knowing more and more about less and less.
Whereas GPs are supposed to be the font of all knowledge. They can't be. At best, they should be able to spot and separate the malingerers from the ones that need expert help, and be the conduit for that to happen
2. The next thing to say is that GPs have been unfairly maligned by the rest of the medical profession for 30+ years. Seen as the ones who can't do the hard stuff. Consequently, there have been decades where medical professionals have shunned General Practice. The reasons why average hours have dropped include 3 vital things-the increasing number of elderly GPs who feel unable to retire, young mums who want to work part-time while their kids are young, and people combining being a GP with other medical work
3. We need a new, modern, flexible system. Where what counts as a "GP" is not just somebody who works Monday-Friday. A proper triage system in place whereby people get to see the appropriate person earlier, from GP to specialist Nurse, to 1 taking the role of Pharmacist
We should have been working towards this for 30 years. It is not happening.