The health service has spent more than £16m on private sector providers to carry out procedures and treatments on patients in Northern Ireland in the last six months.
pending has increased Â- and is already approaching double the total for the whole of the previous year.
The figures were revealed by the Health Minister, Robin Swann, after an Assembly question from SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole.
Since April 2015, more than £110m has been spent on private providers to plug shortfalls in delivering services.
During 2019/20 just under £9.4m was spent by the Department of Health on accessing private providers – but since April some £16.4m has been spent.
The amount allocated to the private sector has fluctuated over the past five years, with just over £35m spent in 2015/16 compared to £23.5m the following year.
In 2017/18 the spend was nearly £8.3m, jumping to around £17.4m in 2018/19.
The Department of Health blamed the impact of Covid-19 for the £16m spend, warning that our health service will continue to require the independent sector to deliver core services.
A DoH spokesperson explained that our health service entered into contracts with three local independent healthcare providers on a “not-for-profit basis”.
Concerns, however, have been raised around whether the health service should rely on the private sector, with critics saying it is a “wasteful and expensive” policy.
People Before Profit MLA Gerry Carroll told the Belfast Telegraph that given the Covid-19 crisis, our health authorities should be focused on improving capacity and services internally, rather than boosting the private sector.
“It’s quite remarkable that in the middle of a global health pandemic, when we should be increasing the capacity of our public health service, that the department is spending almost double what it did last year on treatments and procedures in the private sector,” said Mr Carroll.
“There has quite rightly been a groundswell of support for the NHS throughout the pandemic.
“However, that enthusiasm hasn’t been matched by Stormont’s actions including the lack of investment over many years.”
He continued: “And this news is a latest example of that failed policy in which ‘private’ is deemed better than public.”
The west Belfast MLA insisted the department should reallocate the funding to areas most in need within the health service.
“The department and trusts need to be increasing provision of public healthcare facilities – including the urgent expansion of ICU capacity – and bring the wasteful and expensive practice of funnelling tens of millions to private companies to an end.”
A health department spokesperson said: “During the first surge of Covid, the Health and Social Care (HSC) entered into contracts with the three local independent healthcare providers.
“These contracts were agreed on a not-for-profit, full cost recovery basis and provided HSC trusts with full access to these independent sector (IS) hospital facilities, including theatre capacity for cancer and time critical procedures.”
The spokesperson stressed the £16m figure includes “exceptional” spending due to the pandemic, which would not be required in other years. They added the health service will continue to “require access” to the sector.
Belfast Telegraph
