NHS consultants run private firms charging to cut waiting lists at their own hospitals

Calls for a ban as health trusts award ‘insourcing’ contracts worth millions to tackle backlogs

Some of the country’s most senior NHS clinicians are earning a lucrative sideline running private firms that offer to cut waiting lists at their own hospitals, the Observer can reveal.

Top consultants in Manchester, Sheffield and London are among directors of “insourcing” agencies that charge the health service to treat patients at weekends and evenings and have won millions of pounds of work.

Three senior consultants in Sheffield ran a private firm, Pioneer Healthcare, offering insourcing services to help the NHS cut backlogs. The company won a series of contracts with local hospitals before being sold to a major private healthcare provider in a £13m deal;

At Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, three top surgeons including a clinical lead and a former clinical director are the owners of Fortify Clinic , a company offering “end to end” services to tackle waiting lists. The firm was paid £1.3m by the trust for work in 2022;

Two senior consultants at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust trust set up Venture Health Group in December and began contracting with their own trust that month to help it meet “challenging backlog targets”.