answer text |
<p>National Health Service patients are benefitting from an unprecedented partnership
with private hospitals as we battle the COVID-19 outbreak. The Department and NHS
England and NHS Improvement have worked with the independent sector to secure all
appropriate inpatient capacity and other resource across England. The addition of
around 6,500 additional beds has increased NHS capacity and ensured that facilities
are available for patients diagnosed with COVID-19 whilst ensuring continuity of service
for non-COVID-19 patients requiring elective activity, including cancer and other
urgent treatment. The latest collected information shows that over 215,000 patient
contacts had taken place under the contract. <br> <br> Independent providers have
continued to provide urgent operations for their private pay or insured patients as
well as for NHS patients. From the middle of May 2020, independent providers have
also been able to provide more routine elective work to private pay or insured patients
and where this has been agreed locally with the NHS.</p><p>Regarding future provision
of NHS treatment, an invitation to tender will be issued by NHS England and NHS Improvement
to the healthcare market in October 2020. It will invite providers of elective care
services to put themselves forward to be appointed to a framework and, as such, available
to deliver elective services to NHS patients, on a cost-per-case basis, at rates reflecting
those paid to providers for the same services pre-COVID-19</p><p><br> As part of preparing
for winter, the Government has provided an additional £3 billion to the NHS. This
includes additional funding to the NHS to allow them to continue to use additional
hospital capacity from the independent sector, and to maintain the Nightingale hospitals,
in their current state, until the end of March 2021.</p>
|
|