The Scottish leader Anas Sarwar will announce plans to reduce health waiting lists by making greater use of the private sector.
Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS
BBC Scotland this morning, on the Scottish Labour conference today, tell us the above astonishing news.
It’s now a full year since the Lancet reported on large scale research review by Oxford University telling us that this strategy is extremely ill-advised.
From Oxford University researchers, reported in The Lancet, on 29 February 2024:
A new review has concluded that hospitals that are privatised typically deliver worse quality care after converting from public ownership. The study, led by University of Oxford researchers, has been published in The Lancet Public Health. The researchers carried out a meta-analysis based on evidence from 13 longitudinal studies, covering a range of high-income countries.* Each study assessed quality of healthcare measures for patients before and after health service privatisation, at either the hospital or regional level. The studies included measured indicators of care quality which included staffing levels, patient mix by insurance type, the number of services provided, workload for doctors, and health outcomes for patients such as avoidable hospitalisations.
Key findings:
- Increases in privatisation generally corresponded with worse quality of care, with no studies included in the review finding unequivocally positive effects on health outcomes.
- Hospitals converting from public to private ownership status tended to make higher profits. This was mainly achieved by reducing staff levels and reducing the proportion of patients with limited health insurance coverage.
- Privatisation generally corresponded with fewer cleaning staff employed per patient, and higher rates of patient infections.
- In some studies, higher levels of hospital privatisation corresponded with higher rates of avoidable deaths.
- However, in some cases (e.g. Croatia), privatisation led to some benefits for patient access, through more precise appointments and new means of care delivery, such as out-of-hours telephone calls.
According to the researchers, the results challenge the theory that privatisation can improve the quality of healthcare through increased market competition, and by enabling a more flexible and patient-centred approach.
Watch a report here:
Footnote – In case it’s not obvious, this is very high quality rigorous independent research. You can trust it.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Funding NHS in England £181Billion
Funding SNHS in Scotland £18Billion. More pro rata is spent in Scotland from the £41Billion Block Grant.
£22Billion more funding to go into the NHS from April.
The Tories underfunded the NHS for 14 years. £270Billion funded Covid over two years. Much of it was wasted on non scrutinised contract and loans. Mone etc.
The Westminster Gov on average raises £800Billion Borrows £200Billion. (Include £50Billion) in debt repayment. (High). Scotland raises £89Billion. More pro rata than the rest of the UK.
Westminster (UK) Gov funds illegal wars, redundant weaponry and Trident. A total waste of monies and a danger to Scotland. £50Billion. They spend more monies killing people Austerity, than making them well. Causing mass migration and starvation ruining the world economy.
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Another problem with using the private sector is that private hospitals don’t always have intensive care units (ICU). All operations carry risks but there are some which should not be undertaken unless there is an ICU bed available. High risk operations which private hospitals won’t touch and when something goes wrong with a routine op the private patient often has to be transferred to an NHS hospital.
A recent article in the Herald stated that none of the private hospitals in Scotland had an ICU ward.
Making use of facilities in Private hospitals such as CT/MRI scanners to clear a waiting list for tests and hence speed up diagnoses and treatment OK but for anything else…
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I’d agree with your summary, but for one teensy detail, how many of them actually have their own CT/MRI scanners and staff to operate them ?
It’s a very different scenario here where specialist medical labs set up shop post communism and do everything from bloods to whole body scans to paying customers, but the UK’s NHS evolved in the opposite way with external organisations hiring the NHS resources.
This is “Read my lips” Sarwar’s final desperate self-promotion campaign ahead of 2026, and I can already see recriminations fast and furious over ‘no austerity’ and Grangemouth everywhere, except for BBC Scotland.
Sarwar is no Wes Streeting, but nobody believes him either…
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Anas Sarwar looks very smart, is that his own suit, a donated suit or is he wearing an Emporer’s suit?
Vote Labour in 2026 to reveal the answer.
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Local street ‘gangs’ in Glasgow often style themselves ‘The Young Team’. Does ‘Scottish” Labour have a ‘Bung Team’?
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Well , all these ”donations” to Labour have a price – privatisation of the Health service is numero uno ! Ask Wes Streeting !
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