The government plans for private hospitals to provide NHS patients in England with as many as a million extra appointments, scans and operations a year in a drive to cut waiting lists.
The move represents a significant expansion of the independent sector’s role in helping the health service tackle the long waits for treatment that built up under the Conservatives.
Keir Starmer unveiled the NHS’s growing use of private healthcare in a major speech on Monday in which he set out his new elective reform plan to address a waiting list for planned care on which 6.4 million people are waiting for 7.5m treatments.
Private operators will receive an extra £2.5bn a year in government funding, taking the total to almost £16bn, if they deliver the uplift in care and treatment the prime minister outlined. The initiative is a key element in a plan intended to ensure that patients no longer have to wait more than 18 weeks for non-urgent hospital care by spring 2029.
Full story in The Guardian, 6 January 2025
