Hundreds of England’s NHS consultants have shares in private clinics

theguardian.com:

Hundreds of NHS consultants are shareholders in profit-making joint ventures with private healthcare firms, in arrangements that have generated more than £1bn in revenues since 2015, it has emerged.

The Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI), an independent thinktank, has identified 481 consultants in England with shares in 34 private ventures set up in partnership with providers ranging from the huge US healthcare firm HCA to Specsavers opticians. The vast majority of these consultants – 73% – are NHS doctors.

In a report published on Thursday, CHPI claimed the arrangements were often opaque, and that the financial incentives created by these joint ventures could lead to conflicts of interest. It is calling on regulators to investigate, saying the Covid-19 pandemic has “turbo charged” the share of NHS budgets spent in private clinics.

“The large number of consultants who own shares in private hospitals through joint venture arrangements and the very large financial benefit which they derive from these arrangements is a significant matter of public interest,” said David Rowland, CHPI director.

The report found no evidence of wrongdoing, and there were no instances of patients being put at risk. But Rowland said lack of scrutiny and public understanding of these arrangements meant there was “potential for abuses to occur”.

Between 2015 and 2020, the last full year for which accounts are available, joint ventures with consultants generated nearly £260m in operating profits. While the majority of this cash went to the private firms, consultant shareholders extracted an estimated £31m in dividends, CHPI said.

The average dividend was £11,600 a year, but the highest earning consultants were estimated to have received