Bigger role for private firms would cut waiting times

Ministers and health service bosses have been urged to let private firms treat more patients in a bid to cut hospital waiting lists.

Writing in the Guardian, Stephen Dalton, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, made the controversial comments, arguing that private sector health companies are ‘a force for good’ in the NHS and could be used to start treating more than the 10 million patients a year that are already paid for out of the NHS’s budget.

Additionally, Dalton highlighted how private firms could help provide the ‘billions’ of pounds necessary to build a new generation of hospitals and clinics as part of the NHS’s Sustainability and Transformation Plans.

Dalton writes: “What was seen a decade or so ago as a sensible way of attracting investment, and helped get average waiting times down from 18 months to 18 weeks, is now seen as a political no-go area, with the Tories and Labour locked in an arms race over who has used the private sector the least while in office.

“This is a con-trick, when the reality is that the private sector has been used for decades to help sustain a health service which is free at the point of use and available to all based on need and not ability to pay. So let’s stop pretending that private sector involvement in the NHS is a uniformly bad thing; it isn’t.”

Relying on private capital to build new NHS premises is a controversial call, with former coalition health minister Norman Lamb among the many warning against the move, and showcasing Labour’s Private Finance Initiative, which he said had ‘mortgaged the future of the NHS to the tune of tens of billions of pounds’.