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NHS beds for NHS patients

A new campaign has been launched to limit the amount of private work permitted by NHS trusts. The NHS Support Federation is calling on the government to introduce new legal safeguards to ensure that trusts keep nine out of ten NHS beds for NHS patients.

The federation points out that the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act sets no explicit limit on the amount of private work that trust hospitals can undertake.

‘We are hearing about a lot of trusts opening up closed wards as private wards, or setting up new private clinics’, federation director Rob Yeldham told healthmatters. ‘Some trusts have contracts with large private insurers such as BUPA.’

Mr Yeldham is also concerned that where trusts find it hard to win NHS contracts, they will look increasingly to the private sector for income. Private insurers in turn are attracted to such deals because costs are cheaper in the NHS. But because no figures are collected centrally on sources of trust income, it is impossible to monitor private trust activity.

The federation believes new legislation is needed limiting trusts to using no more than ten per cent of their beds for private patients. It hopes that a Private Members Bill will be introduced in Parliament sometime this year.