News
NHS trusts increasingly turn to private earnings
The NHS is receiving an increasing share of its income from private patients, and a small number of trusts have become virtually dependent on this source of income, an investigation by the magazine Labour Research has revealed.
Overall, the health service provides 15 per cent of all private health care in the country. In 1996-97, NHS trusts earned almost £249m from treating private patients, an increase of 14 per cent over the previous year.
For the NHS as a whole, this represents a tiny proportion of the budget. But some trusts have come to rely heavily on income from private patients to fund core services.
While more than a quarter of NHS trusts – mainly community and mental health trusts – get no money from private patients, the table to the right shows that a handful are receiving up to a quarter of their annual core income from treating private patients.
The top earner in cash terms is the Royal Marsden Hospital in south London. Its annual report for 1996-97 states that the trust ‘generated income of £11.7m from national and international private practice.This income returned a modest surplus and was achieved with no adverse impact on waiting times for NHS patients’. But no evidence is supplied to support the latter statement.
Labour has made no policy statements on the future of NHS pay beds since coming to power.
Labour Research: 0171 928 3649.
James MunroNHS trust income from private patients
These are the 10 NHS trusts with the greatest private patient income, as a proportion of core activity income Royal Brompton Hospital, London 6039 25693 23.5
Royal Marsden Hospital, London 11712 60390 19.4
Great Ormond St Hospital, London 6767 41212 16.4
Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford 3293 26411 12.5
Wrightington Hospital, Wigan 1426 12592 11.3
Harefield Hospital, Middlesex 3613 33181 10.9
Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Middlesex 3074 33108 9.3
Christie Hospital, Manchester 2678 30387 8.8
Papworth Hospital, Cambridge 2487 30058 8.3
Hammersmith Hospitals, London 9305 113369 8.2
Sources: The Fitzhugh Directory of NHS Trusts 1998 and Laing’s Review of Private Healthcare 1997.
