Forced to pay thousands for surgery: Waiting lists mean there's only one option

Faced with a 12 to 18-month wait for a hip replacement on the NHS, housewife Barbara Price decided to do something she had never done before — she went private.

After the 85-year-old’s left hip suddenly ‘went’ due to wear-and-tear arthritis in June last year, she was housebound and unable to get up to make a cup of tea.

Barbara could no longer do any cleaning, washing, cooking, gardening or shopping, and the stairs were impossible to climb, so she lived downstairs and relied on the help of her son Karl, 58.

In agonising pain that even prescribed painkillers could not touch, earlier this year Barbara spent £14,000 of her life savings to have the operation privately.

‘We felt we had no alternative,’ says her daughter Loraine, 54, from Coventry, a full-time carer for her husband. 

‘Mum was in so much pain, she struggled to sleep — which left her exhausted the next day. She couldn’t manage and it was really making her feel low.

‘Her NHS appointments and scans were delayed for months because of Covid and there was nothing we could do, so we decided we’d pay to have the operation done privately.’ Within two days of contacting the private hospital, Barbara saw a consultant and two months later, she had the operation.

‘She can now walk around the garden and there is a sparkle in her eyes again,’ says Loraine.

With NHS waiting lists for hospital treatment in England now topping 5.3 million, the highest on record, and estimates that they could hit ten million — as patients who have been reluctant to seek medical help during the pandemic come forward — increasing numbers of people are, like Barbara, deciding to pay rather than delay their treatment.

Since the end of the first wave of the pandemic, Spire Healthcare, which has 39 private hospitals across the UK, says it has seen ‘a significant rise’ in enquiries from those who want to pay for treatment.

A recent survey it conducted with 1,750 UK adults revealed that 51 per cent were now more likely to consider private healthcare given the growing NHS waiting lists.

HCA Healthcare UK, which has eight private hospitals in England, has carried out double the number of self-pay hip, cataract and abdominal operations compared with the previous year; and 30 per cent more gynaecological procedures.

Meanwhile, the number of people buying private medical insurance for the first time has doubled in the UK since the start of the pandemic, according to the price comparison website ActiveQuote.

Brian WALTERS, managing director of health insurance broker Regency Health in Cheltenham, says it is witnessing ‘a spike in demand’. Yet it doesn’t come cheap.

Even for the most basic package, which includes a £500 excess, private health insurance costs between £40 and £70 a month for someone who is 55, doesn’t smoke and lives in Tunbridge Wells.

And many policies have multiple caveats, such as not including pre-existing medical conditions.

From the start of the first lockdown to March this year, private hospitals were locked into special agreements with the NHS to provide extra beds and treatments for those needing essential care.

However, two thirds of the private sector capacity that was block-purchased by the NHS went unused last summer, according to a Health Service Journal report, with poor communication and confusion in the NHS about how to use the private sector blamed.

If more people choose to go private, there are concerns that the NHS

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