How is the private healthcare sector coping with the Covid-19 pandemic?

The NHS has been under the greatest pressure in its history in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and the struggles have been well documented in the media over the past year. While attention has rightly been focused on the country’s publicly-funded healthcare systems, Covid-19 has had just as much of an impact on the UK’s private healthcare sector as well, albeit in different ways. This piece will touch on how private healthcare is coping with increased popular interest, rising hospital admissions, and the industry’s complicated relationship with the NHS in general.

More people are considering private health insurance

Although many people have long been content with the free treatment available on the NHS, the pandemic has led to an increased demand for private health insurance as a way to reduce the costs of any additional treatment. The influx of Covid-19 patients means that the already-stretched NHS services are more strained than ever before, and waiting lists are now even longer. In this context, it’s clear to see why private health insurance is such an attractive alternative. As the brokers at Healthcare Clarity explain, ‘[patients] are diagnosed and treated much quicker in a location of [their] choice’, with other benefits including access to private rooms and specialist treatments unavailable through public healthcare. At a time where nearly 225,000 Brits have waited over 12 months for routine hospital treatment (the highest number since April 2008), it makes total sense that people are willing to invest in a quicker option.

Interest in private health insurance has nearly doubled since the start of the pandemic, with younger generations most likely to consider paying for healthcare. Covid-19 has also resulted in increasing demand for health insurance as an employee benefit. “The increased strain that the pandemic has placed on the NHS has the potential to increase the uptake of private medical insurance policies further, particularly given the intensified mainstream media attention on delays to treatment,” commented Daniel Pearce, Senior Insurance Analyst at leading data and analytics company GlobalData. Although the current economic climate means this interest may not necessarily lead to sales straight away, Pearce added that: “In the longer term, the private medical insurance market should expect to experience an increase in demand, as the time taken for the NHS to become fully operational again and begin working on delayed cases could outweigh the economic uncertainty faced by households.”

Private health admissions have risen

Insurance isn’t the only way to access private healthcare, and huge numbers of patients have paid outright for private treatment due to fears they’ll be left with an endless wait because of the NHS backlog. In a feature for The Guardian, private hospital group HCA Healthcare claimed to have “seen double the number of self-pay procedures in hip surgeries, ophthalmology (cataracts) and abdominal procedures” compared to last year, and noted that people were coming to their London hospitals from further afield. Meanwhile, Spire Healthcare stated that the biggest increase in inquiries was coming from “people often suffering from debilitating conditions who might otherwise have to wait many months for treatment”.

The Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) has noted specific areas where admissions were especially common, including medical oncology (making up 47% of all elective private admissions during the height of the first lockdown in April). Meanwhile, gynaecology has actually seen higher volumes than before the pandemic. However, such increases didn’t occur across the board, with plastic surgery and ENT both experiencing declines in private treatment.

Tensions have emerged between private hospitals and the NHS

There is a reason HCA Healthcare is seeing more people from outside London visiting their hospitals. A national block contract at the start of the pandemic meant that the NHS was able to use the resources of all private hospitals however they chose, and although this arrangement has continued elsewhere, it came to an end in London in August 2020. This allowed the capital’s private hospitals to once again welcome patients for non-urgent treatment, and has been a source of tension between the private healthcare sector and the NHS. In a leaked letter seen by the Health Service Journal (HSJ), medical directors of acute hospital trusts in London were urged “not to support” staff performing non-urgent work.

“With all but the most urgent elective activity postponed in the NHS in London, it feels profoundly uncomfortable to us that some elective work, that is not time critical, is continuing in the independent sector,” the letter signed by NHS England and senior clinical leaders in London read. “We are asking colleagues to think very carefully about the appropriateness of this, and would like colleagues not to support delivery of such work in the independent sector for a period of time, a month from the date of this letter [8th January 2021] in the first instance, until vaccination and the current lockdown take effect and the pressure on NHS services eases.”

The writers insisted this would mean more private healthcare workers would be available for urgent procedures, and some medical capacity would also be released to help the NHS deal with “the current extreme workload”. In response, a source from the private healthcare sector told HSJ that without the initial block contract, it would be “very difficult” for private hospitals to function without offering non-urgent care, as there would no longer be an income stream to replace the lost revenue. However, with calls to nationalise private hospitals and high-profile journalists like Polly Toynbee insisting “it’s time the private sector stepped up”, discussions about the relationship between private hospitals and the NHS are sure to continue throughout the pandemic and beyond.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes