NHS bosses urge hospitals to use private sector in bid to tackle waiting list backlog

Trusts oppose call for NHS patients to be seen privately as a 'waste of taxpayer money which will destabilise provider budgets'

Hospitals should use private providers to bring down waiting lists, NHS England has said.

Trusts which had not managed to bring down their waiting lists after they were told to cancel non-urgent appointments to cope with demand last winter, were told in a letter that they should start sending patients to neighbouring or private hospitals from September.

While this may help to limit patient waits with colder weather approaching, it is likely to make it even harder for trusts to hit strict savings targets and therefore they could miss on on bonus payments.

The elective care waiting list stood at 4.11 million people in June, a sharp increase from 3.84 million on the list in March 2018 despite the warmer months being a time the NHS usually recovers from winter demand.

Trusts and NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) were told that waiting lists should be no higher in March 2019 than in March 2018 and should be reduced where possible.

While additional funding was given in the Autumn Budget 2017 explicitly for recovering performance the health service has abandoned its mandate target that at least 92 per cent of patients should be seen with 18 weeks of a non-urgent referral.

​NHS England said it was pulling out the stops to meet the targets but sources told the Health Service Journal, which first reported the news, that some senior bosses have already written off this prospect.

In his letter, NHS England national director Matthew Swindells, said: “If current activity levels are maintained, [targets] will not be delivered by most trusts. These gaps will be closed through use of capacity in other trusts and/or the independent sector."

He added: “Any contingency plan for work carried out by other trusts or the independent sector should be available to mobilise by mid-September.”

Waits of over a year must be reduced by at least 50 per cent and that performance will be closely monitored, he said.

Hospital representatives said the current performance was concerning and down to a cocktail of issues, including staff shortages, record winter pressures followed by an unprecedented summer heatwave, and budget squeezes.

NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson said trust bosses were given the impression last year that they should sacrifice elective care to focus resources on cancer and emergency patient waiting times as they "can’t deliver all three."

He added: “We would caution against sending a large amount of work to the private sector. All this will mean is taxpayers paying a premium rate for an NHS surgeon to do a procedure that most could be doing at an NHS trust. As well as wasting taxpayers’ money it could also further destabilise the provider sector’s already challenged finances.”

NHS England declined to comment when asked about the letter by The Independent.