PPUs face rivalry and opportunity

Philip Housden continues his series reviewing the NHS private patient unit (PPU) sector across all regions of England and the rest of the UK by looking at the eight NHS trusts delivering acute care services to the northern home counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.

Figures from the published 2016-17 annual accounts for this group of trusts show that total private patient revenues grew by £0.9m (4.2%) to reach a new record of £22m (Figure 1).

This represents 0.77% of these trusts’ total revenues, a percentage that has remained static for the past several years.

The combined national average outside of London is 0.5%.