NHS Sends Staff for Private Treatment

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Excerpt from the Patients Association Weekly Newsletter, 23/10/09

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6. NHS spends £1.5 million for staff to have private treatment

Information revealed under the Freedom of Information Act has shown that 3,300 members of NHS staff, including Doctors and Nurses, have received private medical treatment over the last three years.

The private treatment, estimated to have cost £1.5 million between April 2006 and April 2009, is said to have been used so that NHS staff could avoid waiting lists.

The practice was defended by a Department of Health spokesperson who said: “If trusts want to get their staff back to work more quickly they can’t jump NHS waiting lists, so going private is an option.”

The private care included treatments for conditions including psychiatric care, counselling, physiotherapy and osteopathy.

Norman Lamb, Health Spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, who obtained the figures said: “It simply isn’t fair to have one service for staff and another for everyone else. If the NHS has to circumvent their own waiting lists the system isn’t working well enough. It’s an admission by the NHS that their own system isn’t able to respond to the mass of people desperate to get back to work.”

PA Director Katherine Murphy said : “I am really surprised. If the NHS’s own staff are not using its service then it is sending out mixed messages to patients who, often, do not have the choice.”

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