Fancy a mattress for the night time after your operation on the ‘free’ NHS?
NHS hospitals are charging up to £205 a night for a hotel-style package treatment – including fruit baskets and daily newspapers, as the health service seeks to raise funds from patients awaiting treatment.
This comes as NHS trusts face a shortfall of more than £2 billion this year, with analysts saying that private rooms will help bolster potential income, according to The Telegraph.
One of the hospitals to begin offering single private en-suite rooms to patients is Wycombe Hospital, which range from between £145 to £205 a night.
The package, which began being offered this year, includes a fruit basket, a television and a daily newspaper of the patient’s choice. The rooms also include a walk-in shower and a storage cabinet, as well as access to WiFi.
Daycase rooms are also offered for £95 a night.
Image of a private room offered by the NHS
The private package, which began being offered this year, includes a fruit basket and a television
A daily newspaper of the patient’s choice is also include in the private room package
This service is available for patients undergoing procedures under the care of general and plastic surgery, trauma and orthopaedics and urology teams.
According to the trust’s website, ‘the private rooms scheme is not a form of private treatment, and all clinical care will be provided free on the NHS unless stated otherwise’.
This comes as NHS trusts with long waiting lists are looking to raise funds.
Five of the top 10 central London NHS trusts released accounts that showed a combined forecast revenue of £197 million, with analysts indicating that similar growth has been seen across the country, The Telegraph said.
That could mean that across the sector more than £770 million was gathered by private rooms in the past financial year, up from £675 million in 2019-2020.
It comes as it was revealed that that nearly half of NHS hospitals in England aren’t meeting basic standards set by healthcare watchdogs, with a total of 49 per cent ranked as either ‘Inadequate’ or ‘Requires Improvement’ by the Care Quality Commission.
These rankings mean a service is ‘performing badly’ or ‘not performing as well as it should’ respectively.
According to an analysis by medical negligence specialists Patient Claim Line hospitals in Uxbridge, Hull, York and Blackpool were among the six worst.
In contrast, 22 hospitals achieved the CQC’s rating of ‘Outstanding’ — about seven per cent of the total NHS hospitals in England.
England’s health system is predicting a deficit of around £2.2 billion across service for 2024-2025.
Following its July victory, the Labour Government said it had already started to work on fixing the service and that the effort to get 40,000 extra appointments a week up and running as promised had already started.
But while Labour insisted it had the policies needed to begin solving the NHS’ problems, experts warned the lack of money and the organisation’s sprawling structure would make this task extremely challenging.
Meanwhile, hospital bosses are concerned that pressure from a new government to hit narrowly defined targets could have unintended consequences and distract from wider improvements.
