NHS-private sector deal extension is ‘boost for independent doctors’
Guaranteed capacity for private activity – just agreed for hospitals who remain on the national contract with the NHS – has been hailed as a boost for independent practitioners.
David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN), called it ‘great news for those insured and self-pay patients that need and expect rapid access to care, as well as for consultants in private practice’.
The private hospitals’ organisation has announced that both sides have set 31 December 2020 as the strict deadline for when the current deal must end.
David Hare
Mr Hare told Independent Practitioner Today there will then be more localised agreements to secure longer-term support from the sector to deal with what are likely to be NHS waiting lists of over 10 million by the calendar year-end and to clear a backlog of over one year for routine treatment – compared with less than 2,000 earlier this year.
The announcement came ahead of a BMA survey which found most doctors think ambitions to get the NHS back to near-normal service by autumn are unlikely to happen.
NHS England recently set targets to resume normal levels of activity over the next few months, but when asked if they thought these would be met, 70% of more than 3,000 doctors who responded said this was either highly (40%) or fairly (30%) unlikely.
A third of doctors thought it would take over a year to clear waiting lists for elective procedures.
Clearing backlog
Commenting on the survey, the IHPN said: ‘With NHS waiting lists expected to reach 10 million by the end of the year, there is a pressing need for significant independent sector capacity to remain available to the NHS to help clear the backlog of delayed and cancelled NHS operations and ensure patients can access the care they need.
‘We are therefore pleased that the unprecedented deal struck in March, putting significant independent sector hospital capacity at the disposal of the NHS, will continue for the vast majority of independent hospitals.
‘Moreover, as part of this renewed deal there will be additional provisions to guarantee private patient access to care, enabling doctors in the independent sector to better meet the needs of both their NHS and private patients.’
Doctors’ survey
The BMA’s latest tracker survey of doctors in England and Wales also found:
- 60% of doctors said they were not very or not at all confident in their local health economy managing demand as normal NHS services resume;5
- Half of doctors said they were not very or not at all confident in being able to manage a second wave of Covid-19;
- 26% of doctors said that in the last two weeks non-Covid demand had increased to pre-pandemic levels, with 17% saying that demand is now even higher than it was before.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul
BMA council chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul said: ‘Although staff are being told that the NHS will begin to return to ‘business as usual’, they have little confidence that it will be able to cope with the backlog of millions of patients left untreated during the first spike of the pandemic.
‘Doctors are worried for their patients and the risk of their condition deteriorating as a result of further delays, given that more than 50,000 patients are already waiting longer than 12 months for treatment – 46-fold the number from a year ago – and 45% of doctors told us they are seeing patients presenting later than before with their symptoms.’