North Wales NHS paid £14m to private care providers

Richard Evans – Local democracy reporter

Patients in north Wales are still being sent to private hospitals and clinics to ease NHS waiting lists, but spending on outsourced treatment has fallen significantly over the past three years.

Figures revealed through a Freedom of Information request show that Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board spent around £14 million in three years to pay for NHS treatments at private facilities.

But the figures don’t include patients sent over the border to England and other parts of Wales, with the health board claiming the information would be too expensive to obtain.

According to the data, the total amount spent on private outsourcing dropped dramatically over the last three years.

In 2022/23, the health board paid £8.48m for 5,656 treatments, dropping to £4.50m for 3,132 treatments the following year in 2023/24.

This figure then fell to just over £1m for  1,000 treatments in 2024/25.

The figures show eye care made up the majority of the private outsourcing.

In 2022/23, eye clinics (ophthalmology) handled 4,445 treatments costing £4.92m; this dropped to 1,699 procedures in 2023/24 at a cost of around £1.88m, dropping again to 1,000 procedures in 2024/25 at a cost of just over £1m.

Skin treatments, or dermatology, went from 565 treatments in 2022/23, costing £148K, to 1,183 the next year, costing £280,000, but dropped to zero in 2024/25.

Orthopaedics (bone and joint procedures) cost £3.41m for 646 treatments in 2022/23 and £2.34m for 250 treatments the year after, but also stopped completely in 2024/25, with no patients sent to private clinics.

Responding to the Freedom of Information request, the health board said: “We do not pay for private treatment of patients – all payments made are for NHS treatment. However, we do contract with private providers to provide NHS activity.”

The health board explained it was not possible to provide all the information regarding patients being sent to England or other parts of Wales, adding: “We would have to carry out a specific exercise to collate this data by conducting a manual case note trawl of over 33,000 inpatient admissions.”