Consultants may win right to work in independent sector treatment centres as well as NHS

NHS trusts in England should not be allowed to bar their consultants from working in their own time for private providers of NHS care, the NHS’s advisory panel on competition has said.

The move comes after more than 40 NHS trusts—around a quarter of the total—have tried to bar or dissuade their consultants from treating NHS patients in the 30 or so independent sector treatment centres or, in some cases, in private hospitals where patients have chosen to go for their NHS funded care.

Trusts have acted because they fear they will lose patients and income to the competition, the panel said last week, and their actions …