Select a region
Waiting times for procedures at the new hospital will be the same whether you are a public or private patient, the senior civil servant of Health has said.
Giving more details about the 30-bed private unit which will be built on the second floor of the new building at Overdale, Caroline Landon said that it would simply have more “bells and whistles” and there would be no difference in the standard or speed of care.
Speaking to Scrutiny, the Director General of Health and Community Services added that she was confident that the ward would bring in “significant” revenue for the Hospital.
The Our Hospital team expect that the self-contained ward, which will have its own access and outpatient unit, will cost £8.8m to build but will generate £3m a year, so pay for itself in nine years.
It will last 30 years before requiring a substantial upgrade.
Pictured: Director General at Health and Community Services Caroline Landon.
Ms Landon said: “I firmly believe that we have to pursue private practice: it attracts clinicians to the island, it gives us more variety around recruitment and it enables more choice.
“But more pertinently it allows us to generate income. Jersey is perfectly positioned for private patients; we have excess beds and low occupancy. We have the capacity to deliver services and generate income that we can put back into public services.
“But we want to give parity of weight to public and private patients, so you don’t opt for private care because it is quicker; you opt for it because it’s got some bells and whistles around it.
“The quality of care, outcomes and access will be the same.”
Ms Landon told the Future Hospital Review Panel that her preference would be for the private unit to be completely separate from public wards but staff would work between the two.
“Our clinicians do a phenomenal job delivering public and private activity but we don’t support them enough around their private work: we don’t provision them with the facilities that they would require in order to maximise that revenue," she said.
“As a consequence, a lot of them use other providers, which isn’t great for them and certainly isn’t great for us.
“So I think we have an opportunity to really grow our private activity but also to maximise our current activity by provisioning the right services for our clinicians in order for them to be able to accelerate their list throughput.
“Originally, we had public and private patients on the same list, which is difficult. We no longer have that.
“We do have a private ward: it is a great facility for what we offer but we could do more. We have completely rationalised how we manage that facility
“We have transformed our theatre schedule and we are trying to be as responsive as we can to our clinicians’ needs.
“We have some challenges but we are working through those with them. The change has been difficult and we perhaps haven’t managed it as well as we could have done, but we are working those through with our clinicians.
“Our Holy Grail is: ‘You come in private, you come in public, you wait the same’ - that is why our valid waiting lists are now on our website.”
Ms Landon added that the Hospital was currently trying to resolve one of its most “wicked issues”: the relationship between Health and private healthcare insurers, and the disparity in what they were willing to cover.
“We have not been great at managing that but we haven’t had a private patient manager so we shouldn’t be surprised. The service that we offer to private patients isn’t what we want it to be or what we envisage it to be. We have a lot of work to do on that.”
Ms Landon added that Health was hoping to recruit a private patient manager soon.
FOCUS: A first look at the new hospital plans...
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.