Covid harm costs NHS trusts £295m
PPU Watch
Compiled by Philip Housden
With all but one of 141 acute NHS trusts in England having now published their annual reports and accounts for 2020-21, the key headlines relating to the impact of Covid on private patient incomes are now clearer:
Total revenues were £380m, down 44% and £295m on 2019-20, and so represents a fall in income to the NHS of approximately £25m a month.
Highest individual trust income was once again The Royal Marsden with £102.3m. This was down £30.3m, but at 22.9% the year-on-year reduction was much less than the sector average.
For the first time for many years, not all of the top ten revenue-generating trusts were from London. Cambridge University Hospitals, with £7.8m income achieved eighth place and Oxford University Hospitals, at £6.7m, was in ninth.
This, in turn meant, that UCL dropped from sixth to 12th with incomes of £5.9m, down £15.9m and 73%.
Royal Free also fell and is now the 18th highest income trust, down from eighth in 2019-20, with revenues of £3.6m, a fall of 82% and £16.8m on last year.
All London trusts together declined by 43% and the average for all out of London trusts’ incomes was a fall of 46%.
Regionally, the declines ranged from a low of 32% in the North-west to 56% in both Yorkshire and the East Midlands.
Interestingly, there was no marked difference between the average reduction of 44% for the 53 trusts with designated private patient beds and the 43% fall for the 88 trusts without designated beds.
A more in-depth analysis of the full picture, region by region, will be shared in a future issue of Independent Practitioner Today.
The trust whose annual report remains outstanding as I write is University Hospitals of Leicester.
Moorfields opens private West End unit
The London Claremont Clinic on New Cavendish Street, Marylebone, in the heart of London’s medical district, is now part of Moorfields Private, the private patient division of Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
It is an outpatient facility with eight consulting rooms, diagnostics and minor treatment rooms, and replaces the trust’s Upper Wimpole Street site.
Andrew Robertson, director of private care, explains: ‘This has been an exciting opportunity for Moorfields Private. As a world-renowned centre of excellence for ophthalmic care, we are delighted to have extended our services and capacity in the heart of London’s clinical district, providing patients with more choice when accessing private services, consultants and treatment.
‘It strengthens our position as one of the country’s leading providers of private eye care and will enable us to re-invest more back into Moorfields Eye Hospital’s NHS services.’
In 2020-21, Moorfields reported private patient revenues of £24.3m, £6.5m and 21% down on 2019-20, but beating the London and England-wide average.
The trust now has the fourth highest grossing NHS private patient service, up from fifth place.
Philip Housden is a director of Housden Group. See his feature article on PPUs in the North-west: ‘Investing pays off’