The delays that patients endure in seeking health care has renewed interest in the question of the value of outsourcing procedures like surgeries to independent service providers. For the National Health Service in the UK outsourcing of NHS services to the independent sector is not a new phenomenon. The BMA is concerned that the Government's pandemic response and newly published elective recovery plan heavily reflect its commitment to further embedding the independent sector into the fabric of health services delivery. In February 2022, The BMA surveyed members to better understand their views on the outsourcing arrangements in place with ISP hospitals, and the potential trade-offs or implications this may have on doctors, patients, and the NHS more broadly. Many of the concerns of the BMA members are relevant in our circumstances as conservative governments consider offering more health services to private service providers.
Our research found that doctors are largely divided as to whether purchasing additional capacity from the independent sector would improve the ability to manage pressures on NHS hospitals. Two in five doctors (39%) feel that ISP contracting will significantly worsen the ability to manage NHS pressures, compared to just 29% who believe it would improve. (NHS Outsourcing, 2022)
Andrew Baback Boozary MD has tweeted some data on mortalities from a study published in the Lancet since implementation of the Health and Social Care Act in Britain.
— Andrew Baback Boozary MD (@drandrewb) August 18, 2022
Yasmine Ghania reporting for CBC News interviewed Steven Lewis, a health policy consultant formerly based in Saskatchewan and adjunct professor of health policy at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, who says the government should be building up the public system instead of turning to the private sector.
"If there is some advantage in having a stand-alone surgical clinic that does nothing but these kinds of day procedures, it would be just as efficient to build them and operate them in the public system," Lewis said in an interview with CBC News. (Ghania, 2022)
Noam Chomsky warns us in a tweet of a strategy he sees invoked by governments that may be ideologically opposed to government involvement in health care.
Privatisation technique: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital
— David (@Zero_4) May 12, 2022
- Noam Chomsky
As the urgent need to improve access to healthcare demands action from the government, we must advocate for changes that avoid the drawbacks experienced from poor choices in other jurisdictions by placing access based on need at the forefront. We need to address increased funding needs for health care by redistribution of government funds and reform of our tax system.
References
Ghania, Y. (2022, July 29). Turning to private sector to reduce surgical wait times in Sask. a bad idea: critics. CBC. Retrieved August 2, 2022, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/surgical-backlog-private-sector-plan-critics-1.6536788
NHS outsourcing. (2022, March 15). British Medical Association. Retrieved August 18, 2022, from https://www.bma.org.uk/advice-and-support/nhs-delivery-and-workforce/commissioning/nhs-outsourcing
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