Plenty of PPU potential

Our tour of private patient units (PPUs) continues this month as Philip Housden looks at the private patient services in the 17 NHS trusts delivering acute care services to the south-west counties of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire.

Figures from the published annual accounts for this group of trusts shows that total private patient revenues have been essentially static for the past three years from 2013-14 to 2016-17 at around £31.5m a year (Figure 1).

This now represents 0.61% of these trusts’ total revenues, a gently falling trend over the period. The combined national average outside of London is 0.5%.

These 17 acute trusts can be divided into four groups based on analysis of private patient revenue growth and by percentage of overall trust patient incomes (Figure 2):