The NHS effectively subsidises private health care by picking up the pieces when patients become too ill for the private clinics/hospitals to deal with.
The Centre for Health & the Public Interest finds up to 6,000 patients a year are transferred from private to NHS facilities due to complications (& these are only the direct transfers, not those after treatment) costing the NHS at least £250m a year.
The NHS should be (at the very least) paid for these 'rescues'!
@ChrisMayLA6 Private medicine is a parasite when it comes to training as well - they (the organisations) pay nothing toward the training of the staff that they poach from the NHS. From the first day that I stepped on a ward I swore that I would have no part of it.
@tompearce49 @ChrisMayLA6 I love private medicine! It is quick and efficient and I get help when I need it.
My mother trusted public medicine and she died due to the tight deadlines and incompetence.
Never again public medicine for me.
@ChrisMayLA6 @tompearce49 This is interesting and potentially a difference between countries. If a private clinic performs badly in sweden, they will be shut down. Not at once, but if done repeatedly, they will.
Maybe this is not so in the UK?
But... as always with the private sector, caveat emptor, and do your research before you buy. If something is too good to be true in medicine, it probably isn't true.
i think in the medium term a consistently underperforming facility that was injuring or killing patents would be shut-down here, but I'm not sure how quick that might be
@h4890 @tompearce49
Well, I hope you never suffer complications after treatment - equally, no-one is saying public health provision is without its problems (but they do actually have to sort them out, unlike private providers who merely pass their problem patients on)