Go big or go home if you want to be a hit in the UK
To grow in the UK hospital sector, you need the scale and resilience to build your sales with the NHS.
This was the message from one CEO who spoke to Healthcare Europa recently. Size matters.
You can make money from NHS patients if you leverage economies of scale and grow your NHS sales to hundreds of millions of pounds. The NHS may be demanding on timescales and call for more acute work but it does pay and has good growth prospects. After all everyone in the NHS will tell you it is in dire straits and unable to meet demand.
Payment for these patients may be less than you might expect to get from out of pocket payments (volumes of which are rising) or PMI payments (volumes of which are falling), but the resulting numbers of patients you end up treating will make up for this – because then you can cut the cost of delivering treatment by having a large, flexible workforce that can cope with the task in hand.
What private hospital operators understand, but not all the general public has grasped, is that there needs to be a pressure valve to alleviate the strain on a system which those working in it tell us is over-burdened and under resourced. Given the current financial difficulties the NHS is facing, and increasing waiting times, there is more than enough work available for everyone willing to take it on – as long as you are big enough to make the work pay.
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to David Farbrother or call 0207 183 3779.
