Patients waiting for NHS care will be encouraged to use the health service’s app to book their operation at a private hospital under government plans to tackle the huge care backlog.
The proposal will be included in the forthcoming report of the “elective recovery taskforce” Rishi Sunak set up last December to come up with new ideas.
Under the plan the role of the NHS app would be enhanced so that patients stuck on the 7.2 million-strong waiting-list in England could use it to check how long they would have to wait for surgery at NHS and private hospitals. They would then book their procedure at whichever best suited them, it is understood.
The prime minister is keen to see a major expansion in the number of NHS patients who exercise their existing right to choose where they have treatment as a key way of cutting the NHS backlog. Sunak has made cutting NHS waiting times one of his five pledges to the British public.
The taskforce’s report will also recommend that the number of people undergoing surgery is increased “as far as possible via the independent sector”, according to a report in the Times.
It will also reportedly say that patient choice – originally introduced by Labour under Tony Blair – should be “the default mechanism” for any patient who is referred by a GP for hospital care.
However, an expert on the private sector’s role in providing NHS care voiced scepticism on Monday about what difference the app plan would make to patients’ behaviour and the size of the backlog.
Charles Tallack, director of data analytics at the Health Foundation thinktank, said that any steps to bring down the elective care waiting lists were welcome. But, he added: “It is not immediately apparent how a new app would help achieve that, especially when patients are already able to book NHS treatment with a private provider via the NHS Choose and Book website.”
Tallack added: “Key to the challenge of scaling up NHS-funded elective care in the independent sector are funding and staffing, both of which are severely constrained.”
Private providers currently undertake about 140,000 of the 1.5m NHS-funded operations performed each month. Labour is also keen to maximise any spare capacity private hospitals have.
Research published by the Health Foundation thinktank earlier this month warned that private hospitals were likely to be able to play only a limited role in busting the backlog.
It found that private providers have significantly increased the amount of eye surgery they carry out over recent years – mainly cataract removals – and now do 38.6% of all such procedures, up from 23.3% before Covid-19 hit in early 2020.
However, they have only increased the proportion of NHS-funded orthopaedic operations they perform – mainly hip and knee replacements – from 26.8% before the pandemic to 31.2%.
Tallack said at the time that the study showed “while it has important role to pay, the independent sector is not a panacea for bringing down waiting lists, despite it being at the heart of the elective recovery plan”.
The Centre for Health and the Public Interest, a thinktank that focuses on the NHS’s relationship with the private sector, has said that private hospitals employ very few doctors directly and rely for the most part on NHS medics working part-time for them on top of their main job.
David Hare, the chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, and a member of the taskforce, said private hospitals hoped that the taskforce report “will ensure patients are fully informed about their options to choose the most appropriate provider for them, including from the independent sector.
“This will ensure more patients are able to get faster NHS treatment, free at the point of use.”
