Private hospitals 'rush patients back to the NHS when something goes wrong'

Record numbers of patients treated in private hospitals are being rushed back into the NHS for emergency care when something goes wrong. Campaigners urged Health Secretary Wes Streeting to stop “exposing our NHS to ever more private sector cherry picking” after he outsourced more appointments. Data released under Freedom of Information laws suggested there would have been almost 500 instances this year when patients are being blue-lighted back into NHS hospitals for emergency care. This is likely to be a new record and experts are warning that taxpayers’ money would be better spent building up NHS hospital capacity, rather than paying profit-making firms to carry out treatments on their behalf. Cat Hobbs, director at public ownership campaign group We Own It, said, “It’s truly shocking that this Labour government is exposing our NHS to ever more private sector cherry picking. These figures demonstrate the danger and waste of privatising the NHS. “Private hospitals don’t train doctors, they have no emergency care and they choose the easiest cases. This disastrous cocktail makes them a burden on our NHS, which is forced to clean up after them.” A long-held criticism of outsourcing NHS care is that private hospitals cherry pick the relatively simpler - and more profitable - procedures while leaving the NHS with more complex patients. This increases demand in the private sector can contribute to doctors leaving the NHS, adding to workforce shortages. A total of 6.15 million appointments, tests and operations were delivered by independent providers for NHS patients in 2025. That was around half a million more than in 2024 when Labour came to power. Speaking about making greater use of private hospitals last year, Mr Streeting said: “I’ll do everything I can to get NHS patients treated faster, free at the point of use. This is a principled, progressive position, not just a pragmatic one. We’re not prepared to continue two-tier healthcare, when those who can afford it get treated on time, and those who can’t are left behind.” Our data shows 1,700 patients have been rushed from private providers into NHS hospitals for emergency care over the past five years as the NHS outsourced more appointments. Outsourcing had increased under previous Tory governments with 477 people transferred from private providers into the NHS in 20219/20. It then dropped due to the Covid-19 pandemic to below 300 such emergency transfers in the following two years. Since then they have steadily increased from 327 in 2022/23, to 355 in 2023/24 and 435 in 2024/25. Data is only available for the first 10 months of 2025/26 but this suggested there will be 490 such transfers that year. Dr John Puntis, a retired hospital consultant and co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, said: “These figures emphasise the dependent nature of the so-called independent sector on the NHS, which it uses as a safety net. There are long established concerns about risks to patients in private hospitals and the fact that the NHS picks up the tab when things go wrong. “This is in addition to the NHS also bearing the full cost of training the consultants who undertake private practice - around £8.75million. Keep Our NHS Public calls for investment in the NHS rather than the private sector to build capacity as the best way of providing high quality services for patients.” The figures show that the biggest age group that end up being transferred back into the NHS in this way are over-65s who are more likely to need procedures such as cataracts or joint replacements. Previous figures have shown that overall around 6,000 patients every year are moved from a private hospital to the NHS, with these latest stats revealing about one in every ten is an emergency case. Cat Hobbs added: “The NHS was the most efficient healthcare system in the world in 2014. Privatisation has failed and patients deserve better. It’s chaotic and nonsensical to carry on like this. This new data should be a wake up call for Wes Streeting. Invest in the NHS directly, build up capacity, phase out the wasteful, cherry picking private sector.” A spokesperson for the Independent Healthcare Provider Network (IHPN) said: “Both private and NHS hospitals will, on extremely rare occasions, need to transfer patients to a higher acuity setting. “This happens extremely infrequently due to strict clinical protocols in both the private sector and the NHS, with these transfers accounting for just 0.009% of patient activity delivered in the independent sector. On the very rare occasions where a transfer is needed protocols are in place to ensure that the process is managed as safely and effectively as possible." The NHS is seeing the biggest increase in outsourcing since the hated 2012 Tory reforms which saw David Cameron ’s austerity government open the health service up to the private sector. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Thanks to this government’s £26 billion investment and modernisation we are putting our NHS firmly on the road to recovery, cutting NHS waiting lists by 405,000 reaching the lowest level in three years and delivering 5 million more appointments – leading to the largest fall in dissatisfaction with the health service in nearly three decades. “Our partnership with the independent sector is helping patients get the treatment they need faster, we expect them to maintain high standards of care for patients. We will use every lever at our disposal to continue to cut waiting lists while keeping services free at the point of use.”