Private firms now treat almost one in five NHS patients with certain conditions due to the last Labour government's embrace of competition, an authoritative study reveals.
Allowing profit-driven health firms to be paid out of NHS funds has seen private operators grow from doing very few state-funded procedures to now being a "significant" provider of care, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said in a report.
Private firms have made such inroads that independent sector treatment centres – facilities set up to treat NHS patients – now carry out 17% of hip replacements (11,500 operations), 17% of hernia repairs (9,000) and 6% of gall bladder removals (3,000) annually in England. Their share of NHS patients grew rapidly between 2006-07 and 2010-11 after Labour's promotion of patient choice.
By 2010-11 private providers also handled 8% of patients' first attendances in relation to orthopaedics or trauma, such as a broken limb; 4.8% of such attendances for gastroenterological problems; and 2.3% of attendances for sight problems.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/19/nhs-patients-treated-private-firms
