BMI healthcare censured over deliberate delays for NHS patients

Posted 26/07/2012

It has been discovered that the Director of BMI Meridien Hospital in Coventry wrote to Consultants at the hospital ordering them to postpone surgery for patients who had been referred via the NHS, so that more people would pay for the operations to avoid long delays. Consultants were ordered in the first instance to delay surgery for four weeks and then by eight weeks.

Under the government’s policies, patients have the individual choice to be treated in a private hospital, where the NHS will pay for the work but the private hospital achieves a higher revenue when patients fund their own care.

The Hospital’s Executive Director, Bernie Craven, said that the measures had been introduced to discourage patients who might be in a position to fund private treatment instead of turning to the NHS.

Sharon Allison, a medical injury Lawyer from Ashtons Legal, says “Despite the hospital’s assertions that they are trying to preserve precious NHS resources, one has to question the morality of making vulnerable NHS patients wait for much needed surgery and treatment.

Private and NHS patients should receive the same standards of care irrespective of whether the hospital is NHS or privately run. This really does make a mockery of the government’s policy of the choose and book system if, by using it, patients are going to be at a disadvantage”.