A new study has suggested that some private hospitals are putting patients’ lives at risk with senior doctors warning that they lack the facilities to deal with emergencies should things go wrong.
The Centre for Health and the Public Interest, which is a leading medical think-tank, reported that 800 patients died unexpectedly in private hospitals between 2010 and 2014. This figure includes those referred to private hospitals by the NHS.
Over a quarter of the 1.6 million operations carried out by private hospitals in the last year were performed on NHS patients and increasingly GPs are being encouraged to refer more patients to the private sector, partly to help deal with the growing burden on NHS hospitals.
Speaking to the BBC’s Inside Out programme, author of the report Colin Leys said: “In the NHS, you have a national reporting and learning system that is independently operated, to which all hospitals must report all serious incidents and if they see a pattern building up they intervene and that doesn’t happen for private hospitals.
“In any given year, about 200 patients die unexpectedly in private hospital … we don’t know who they are, why it happened we just know that it happens. It’s surprising because private hospitals on the whole don’t take any patient that is high risk.”
Fiona Tinsley, Medical Negligence Solicitor at Clear Law said: “It is very concerning that we are seeing these sorts of figures when patients are being increasingly referred to private hospitals to help ease the burden on NHS hospitals at the moment.
“All hospitals, whether private or otherwise need to have the correct facilities in case to deal with emergencies as and when they arise.”
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