Although invoice volumes for insured healthcare have fallen for the second consecutive quarter, private healthcare providers have cut NHS waiting lists by 206,000 over the past year.
More than six million tests and operations for NHS patients were delivered by independent healthcare providers over the past year, which has cut waiting lists by 206,000.
Independent healthcare providers delivered an average of 19,000 surgical procedures and 100,000 outpatient appointments every week this financial year. In doing so, they helped to treat more than 1.1 million people.
“I’ll do everything I can to get NHS patients treated faster, free at the point of use,” said health and social care secretary Wes Streeting.
Using spare capacity in the private sector is central to the government’s goal that 92% of patients in England should wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment.
At the start of the year, prime minister Keir Starmer struck a new agreement with the independent sector as part of plans to end the hospital waiting list backlog.
The deal set out how independent sector capacity can be used to tackle some of the longest waits in specialist areas of treatment, such as gynaecology, where, according to government figures, there is a backlog of 260,000 women waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment.
“These latest figures demonstrate just how important the independent sector is in providing much-needed NHS treatment – delivering around 10% of all NHS elective activity, and a record amount of appointments,” said David Hare, chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network.
A more sustainable level
While NHS use of the private sector is booming, invoice volumes for insured healthcare fell for the second consecutive quarter in the third quarter of this year, according to Healthcode, the UK’s official clearing organisation for medical invoices.
It processed and validated 2.9 million invoices on behalf of private healthcare providers in which is a rise of 2% year-on-year but a quarterly fall of 1.6% on the previous quarter, itself a fall of 0.7% on the first three months of the year.
Similarly, insured healthcare activity generated £1.3 billion for the sector, which was 4.9% higher year-on-year but down slightly on the second quarter.
The fall was put into context by Healthcode’s managing director, Peter Connor, who said that it was “unrealistic” to expect another year of double-digit growth in insured healthcare.
He went on to say that this year “marked a return to a more sustainable level”, pointing to invoice volumes 3% higher than at this point last year, whereas the equivalent annual growth in 2024 was 12%.
