Private beds for psychiatric care cost NHS £200m a year

The NHS is paying the private sector more than £200m a year to look after the mentally ill because the loss of thousands of NHS beds is forcing health authorities to pay inflated prices for beds in private psychiatric hospitals.

Private psychiatric revenue has risen from £198m in 1997 when Labour came to power to £336m in 2001, with two-thirds – about £220m – coming from NHS funds, according to a report published later this month by healthcare analysts Laing and Buisson.

Over the same period the NHS has lost 3,426 psychiatric beds, admits the Department of Health. Analyst William Laing said: "Mental health services are the fastest growing sector of independent healthcare as the NHS increasingly out-sources acute psychiatric care."

Last year in London alone sending 290 patients to private hospitals cost the NHS £35m according to the Department of Health – more than £2,400 per patient each week. A similar NHS bed costs £500 less.

Consultant psychiatrist Trevor Turner, a spokesman for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who works at East London and the City Mental Health NHS trust, said he was sometimes forced to send patients to Wales or Yorkshire.

"I see patients on the wards and in outpatients. I can't do that if they are in a private hospital in another part of the country. The private sector is expensive and monitoring patients is difficult."

While the practice is growing Dr Turner say it contradicts the Government's national service framework for mental health, a blueprint for care and treatment that says patients should be treated locally.

The independent health think tank the King's Fund warns that reliance on the private sector will increase if the controversial plans in the Mental Health Bill for patients to face compulsory detention and treatment becomes law.

A spokesman for the Independent Healthcare Association (IHA), which represents private hospitals, said: "We provide a lot of services that the NHS can't, such as specialist eating disorder services, and almost 80 per cent of brain injury rehabilitation services," said the spokesman.

The Independent on Sunday is campaigning for better treatment of the mentally ill and against a government Bill which allows the indefinite detention of people with personality disorders before they have even committed a crime.

Yesterday, more than 500 people demonstrated against the Bill, marching in protest from Westminster to the site of the original Bedlam asylum in east London.

Among them was Liz Main, who, in 1999, during a period when she was depressed and suicidal, went to the emergency clinic at the Maudsley Hospital in south London. The beds were full so she was sent to a private hospital where she describes conditions as "awful".

"You never saw a consultant – they are all NHS people doing a little bit of private work – but they are never there when there is a crisis," said Ms Main, who is 35. "When I met a new consultant she gave me just four minutes."

Dr Rufus May, a clinical psychologist working in Bradford who had travelled down specifically for yesterday's demonstration, said: "I think many clauses in the Mental Health Bill will have a spirit-breaking effect on staff and patients alike. The mentally ill have been silent for 150 years and now they're demanding to be listened to.''

Last night a Department of Health spokeswoman said: 'We recognise that if patients are going outside their locality it disrupts their care. We are going to make sure that we provide local services by 2007."

Additional reporting by Jonathan Thompson