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Government to buy "no frills" private sector operations for NHS
22 Mar 2004 by Malcolm Drury
The government has announced plans to buy thousands of basic operations from the private sector each year at a substantially discounted price. Under the scheme, the Department of Health will build on an existing agreement between the government and private hospital groups through which local NHS trusts can "buy" treatment for their patients where there is not enough capacity in the NHS. However, that agreement has turned out to be very costly, with, for example, a hip replacement operation under it costing almost 50% more on average than a conventional NHS equivalent.
Douglas Ramsbottom, a spokesman for the Department of Health, told our reporter that the idea of the new plan is to make use of spare capacity in the private sector to reduce NHS waiting lists. By buying in bulk, he said, the Department's purchasing power can be maximised. He noted that the operations performed under this bulk purchase would be "no frills" - that is, just enough to get the job done.
As an example, he said that there would be fewer stitches in order to cut down on costs, so scars might be a bit more noticeable, and patients would be required to pay rent for their beds and provide their own bandages, although they would be able to buy the latter from Department-approved vendors at very reasonable rates. Brand-name anaesthetic would also be avoided in favour of a cheaper generic product, while some operations could be outsourced to lower-cost centres such as in India and Botswana. He noted that it would all depend on who comes in with the lowest bids.
An additional way of keeping costs down would be to use only recently qualified, and therefore lower paid, private sector surgeons. He pointed out that in that regard the scheme fully complements a policy announced last month to use understudies in NHS operations in an effort to reduce costs and waiting lists. He said that the new scheme would lead to an even quicker elimination of the lists.
Mr Ramsbottom cautioned, however, that patients might not get their first choice of operation. "There will be a limited number of each type of operation available each year," he said, "and it will depend on what we have left when it's their turn, so somebody hoping for an appendectomy might have to settle for a tonsillectomy. They will always have the opportunity to refuse, but if they did they would, of course, go back to the bottom of the list."
"But the point is," he continued, "that they will be given the opportunity to have an operation."
Speaking to our reporter later on, Health Secretary John Reid praised the scheme as demonstrating the government's commitment to providing reasonable quality and affordable health care to everyone in Britain. He emphasised that patient safety will not be unduly jeopardised. "We want these patients in and out as quickly as possible, naturally, but we don't want them coming back for repairs. That just wouldna be cost-effective and would defeat the whole point of the scheme," he said. "And besides, the longer they're in hospital the more likely they are to catch a super bug."
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Look at this, moron.
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