Sir Keir Starmer reveals new private healthcare partnership to help cut NHS waiting times
An estimated 7.54 million treatments were still waiting to be carried out at the end of October last year.
Monday 6 January 2025 16:09, UK
A new partnership with the private healthcare sector will help reduce waiting times to 18 weeks over the next five years, Sir Keir Starmer has said.
The prime minister said a new agreement has been signed with the private sector to "make the spaces, the facilities and resources of private hospitals more readily available to the NHS".
He called it a "partnership in the national interest" and said it will make better use of private healthcare than is already being used by the NHS.
The PM batted away suggestions he was trying to privatise the NHS by stealth and said he is "not interested in putting ideology before patients and I'm not interested in moving at the pace of excuses".
The government's plan to deliver two million extra appointments by the end of next year will also see greater access to community diagnostic centres (CDCs) to help deliver up to half a million more appointments, alongside 14 new surgical hubs and three expanded existing hubs.
Up to a million appointments could be freed up by giving patients the choice to forego follow-up appointments currently booked by default, the government says.
The aim of the reforms is that by the end of March 2026, an extra 450,000 patients will be treated within 18 weeks.
Conservative shadow health secretary Ed Argar accused the government of re-launching plans Tory health minister Sir Sajid Javid announced in 2022.
He said the Tories delivered 160 CDCs with nine million additional appointments, 18 surgical hubs, worked with the independent sector to tackle backlogs and improved technology and equipment with £76bn of investment, while the NHS app was created during the pandemic then redesigned for regular updates.
Figures published by NHS England last month showed an estimated 7.54 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of October - the lowest figure since March 2024.
According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the last time the NHS met the target of 92% of patients receiving treatment within 18 weeks was in 2015.
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The reforms for England will also see an overhaul of the NHS app to give patients greater choice over where they choose to have their appointment and will also provide greater detail to the patient including their results and waiting times.
The first step in the digital overhaul will be completed by March 2025, when patients at over 85% of acute trusts will be able to view their appointment details via the NHS app, the government said.
They will also be able to contact their provider and receive updates, including how long they are likely to wait for treatment.
In the effort to free-up one million appointments, patients will be given more choice over non-essential follow-up appointments, while GPs will also be given funding to receive specialist advice from doctors before they make any referrals.
The CDCs will be open 12 hours a day and seven days a week wherever possible. Patients will be able to access a broader range of appointments in locations that are more convenient for them and which may speed up the pace of treatment.
The government believes its plan will help it to deliver the equivalent to 40,000 extra appointments a week in its first year - which was one of
Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged £22bn over the next two years to cut NHS waiting times in her October budget, but some in the sector fear a workforce shortage means the prime minister's ambitions will be hard to achieve.
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There have been some concerns that giving patients choice of the location of their treatment may see some hospitals in greater demand than others - but Health Secretary Wes Streeting said this was a "matter of principle".
"When I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, I was inundated with colleagues in parliament who were asking who my surgeon was, whether I was going to the best place for treatment, whether I was exercising my right to choose in the NHS," he said.
"Now, it turned out I had one of the best kidney cancer surgeons in the country assigned to me by the NHS, so I was lucky.
"But frankly, someone like my mum as a cleaner should have as much choice and power in the NHS as her son, the health secretary."
NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard said the government's plan was an "ambitious blueprint".
"The radical reforms in this plan will not only allow us to deliver millions more tests, appointments and operations, but do things differently too - boosting convenience and putting more power in the hands of patients, especially through the NHS app."