Is the private sector a good thing for the NHS?

Yes—Richard Smith

The British public wants the NHS to continue to cover everybody, be free at the point of care, and provide equal quality of care for all. Severe financial constraints mean that these fundamental values are threatened, but the private sector can help sustain them. It can do so by continuing its present contribution, helping with the workload, bringing new skills, and contributing to competition.

Most general practices are in the private sector but see only NHS patients. This has been the case since the beginning of the NHS. Nobody doubts that general practice has been a good thing for the NHS, although the inverse care law—which says that those who need care the most get the least—is more true of general than hospital practice.1 General practice has also been highly variable in quality.2 Private companies that expand beyond single practices, often owned and run by GPs, are bringing higher quality care to underserved areas and ensuring more consistent quality across practices.3

To sustain the NHS it will be necessary to provide more services in the community, and larger companies with a greater capacity to invest will be more able to do this than traditional practices. But most importantly the private sector can supply new products and services. For example, it was the private sector that supplied general practitioners with electronic records years ahead of them arriving in hospitals, and now Patients Know Best, a company founded by a doctor and of which I’m the chair, is linking together records from practices, hospitals, and mental health services …