My OH has had back problems for many years and has seen the GP, physio and had MRIs etc. These show he has 3 discs out and deterioration to the spine and where the cords exit. (Think I got that right)
He is now on Week 22 of an approx 40 week wait even to see a spinal surgeon on the NHS. I feel the NHS should tighten up on how many ops these surgeons can do privately. They pay them enough to start with so all their private jobs are a big bonus.
By coincidence a woman I know has very similar problems and is under the SAME consultant. She is very, very well off so paid privately to see him last week and is having her op this week!!
It seems so unfair that this consultant can do private ops at the drop of a hat and it makes me wonder whether when we hear of people getting their ops cancelled it is because the surgeon gives his private patients priority. he is also of an age where all his medical training would have been free on the NHS.
I know several people who have paid privately for knee, hip and back ops recently but I also know a lot of people who are insistent that they have worked and paid their NI all their lives and they will not pay privately. OH says the same! Most of me agrees with him but then I think if I was in severe pain I would pay up but grudgingly. He has a much higher pain threshold than me.
I would be interested in what other people think or have decided to do.
I don’t know about the area in which you live but my understanding is that in the area where I live it has happened that if a patient pays privately for their initial consultation then they seem to proceed up the NHS list more quickly for their procedure.
You have to investigate whether there are any follow up charges if things go wrong with any op in the private sector. Make sure they will put right any complications. If you end up in ITU what then? etc. If you are insured all good, but pay as you go is a risk for any surgical procedure.
As for private work this has been an ongoing debate
Private practice
In 2002, the then Secretary of State for Health highlighted the ‘vexed issue’ of consultants’
private practice (Milburn 2002a), which was a legacy of the 1948 settlement and was at the
heart of concerns about the old contract. Misgivings about its potential to create perverse
incentives had led the House of Commons Health Committee to call for a study into the
influence of private practice on NHS waiting lists (House of Commons 1991). A decade on,
the committee again recommended that the Department of Health look at ways ‘in which
the suspicion of perverse incentives can be removed from the system’ (Health Committee
2000, para 56).
Evidence had also emerged from other sources. The Audit Commission reported that only
just over half of consultants attended all their NHS commitments, and the quarter of
consultants who did the most private work did less NHS work than the rest (Audit
Commission 1995). Specialties with the longest NHS waiting lists were reported to be the
main, and most lucrative, areas of private practice (Yates 1995a). Attempts were made to
assess the amount of time consultants spent in the private sector (Health Which? 1998;
Yates 1995a). NHS employers did not appear to have an accurate overview of the extent
of private sector activity by their consultants (Pay and Workforce Research 1999).
The government claimed that, while most consultants worked very hard for the NHS, a
minority ‘do not properly co-operate in working productively for the health service and
put their private practice before their NHS work’ (Department of Health 1998). The NHS
Plan raised the possibility that newly appointed consultants should be prevented from
engaging in similar work outside the NHS, ‘for perhaps the first seven years of their career’
(Department of Health 2000, p 79).
The focus on private practice set the tone for drawn-out negotiations on the new
contract between the Department of Health and the British Medical Association (BMA).
The proposal to ban private practice for new consultants was vehemently opposed by
the consultant body. The underlying problem was that the old contract had never set
clear boundaries around what was, and what was not, NHS time. The issue related to
accountability, clarity and transparency over consultants’ commitment to the NHS, but
this was submerged by ideological clashes over the legitimacy of private practice.
Now that was back in 2006 before the recent changes to the consultant contract, before covid, before Brexit etc. The reason it’s easier to get an appointment in the private sector is because they have fewer people waiting for an op. Some private healthcare organisations have nearly gone out of business because of the pandemic and are queuing up for business. But be careful to check the terms and conditions per my original point above.
I have been in chronic pain for 9 months now with two Discs problems on my Spinal Cord, saw the Surgeon for the 1st time a couple of days ago, and told me that the NHS waiting list is another year and a half to wait, I cannot not wait that long, so I have booked a Private Hospital, and hopefully I will be having surgery at the end of this month, but its costing me £10,000.
Hope all goes well susie. My friend just paid about £14K for a new hip but was able to do so because her Mum died last year and she left her comfortably off.
I have had my surgery, but I am in chronic pain, as I fell whilst in Hospital, just after having surgery, I now can’t walk and have a zimmer frame and need loads of physio.
Awww … how could the staff allow you to fall? If in any way a bit tottery after surgery, I would have expected a zimmer available at all times for you. My wife had one right by her bedside and she was sent home with it too AND the occy health arranged for a 2nd to be delivered for upstairs by the stair lift for her to use.
If you pay for the op do you then receive free NHS physio as you would normally?
I suspect you might have to fork out for the physio too, but that is essential.
Maybe it all comes in one package?
My friend who went privately a few weeks ago said that her physio while she was in hospital was part of the package. I think went you come home you then get some sessions on the NHS.
No problem with the Hospital, they were all lovely.
They did give me a zimmer frame, it was my own fault, I was sitting in the chair and decided to get up and fell.
They did give me two zimmer frames to take home that I am using.
