British patients are increasingly flocking to private providers for their healthcare as the National Health Service (NHS) buckles under lengthy waiting lists, which have been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.
The surge in demand has seen the value of the private healthcare market ballooning to a record £12.4bn in 2023, with the NHS forking out more than £2bn over the year in its efforts to ease the patient backlog, reports The Independent.
Last year’s NHS annual spend was a record – outside the pandemic when emergency funding was given – according to a report by market research company LaingBuisson.
What’s more, the the report predicts that NHS’ use of the private sector is unlikely to reduce due to “constrained funding”. This is despite the Health Ministry reportedly planning an inflation-busting funding deal for the NHS worth between £7bn and £8bn.
The report reveals that private hospitals were valued at £6.8bn, up from £1.9bn in 2003, and that 75% of revenue went to the five of the biggest providers, with individual private clinics and doctors accounting for £4.92bn of the private sector’s gains in 2023.
According to the analysis, the proportion of funding for the private sector coming from the NHS grew from 10% in 2003 to an estimated 31% in 2023.
It predicts that the growth in the UK private healthcare market will outstrip inflation over the next year and its market value is likely to surpass £13bn by the end of the 2024-25 financial year, reaching more than £14bn by 2025.
Report author Tim Read said: “The analysis suggests that the private acute healthcare market is continuing to benefit from the challenges affecting the NHS.
“Hospital providers also continue to benefit from the continuing boom in private health insurance, which has offset a slight softening in demand from those paying out of their own pocket for care.
“For those providers more focused on providing additional capacity to the NHS, there remains little sign of a lessening of need of independent sector support, and revenue from this segment remains robust.”
The report found that while hospital groups are now also exploring new areas like private GP services, the largest area of NHS-funded care done in the private sector was ophthalmology – with around 50% of procedures being undertaken by independent providers.
There are believed to be around 207 ophthalmology clinics in England, which mainly provide cataract surgery. Cataract surgery was worth £730m to the private market in 2023-24, up from 190m in 2022-23.
Cosmetic surgery clinics make up the largest proportion of private sector small clinics, with 599 operating countrywide. However, figures show the number of procedures done in these clinics in Britain was down in 2023 – at 28 000 – a fall attributed partly to medical tourism.
The report said: “Medium-term prospects for NHS purchasing of independent sector healthcare services are positive and are likely to remain so if the NHS is unable to deliver adequate and timely diagnostic and elective surgery services in-house.”
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