> Secondly, a consultant can refer you back to the NHS for treatment, effectively "jumping the queue".
The patient would go to the back of the NHS queue, so I'm not sure how they're jumping anything.
The real problem is that private healthcare over-treats people with unnecessary surgery, and cherrypicks the easy stuff, but dumps patients back into NHS care as soon as they get complex.
> The patient would go to the back of the NHS queue
This is not true.
I went to the NHS over my kid's glue-ear. We had to see a consultant, but the earliest appointment was 9 months, and the hearing problem was impeding our child's language acquisition. So we went private, and had an appointment with the consultant in a few weeks. The consultant recommended surgery to install grommets (wow!), and a few weeks later we attended for NHS surgery, to be performed by the same consultant.
This was 30 years ago; but I've been told recently (a couple of days ago) that this still goes on.
The patient would go to the back of the NHS queue, so I'm not sure how they're jumping anything.
The real problem is that private healthcare over-treats people with unnecessary surgery, and cherrypicks the easy stuff, but dumps patients back into NHS care as soon as they get complex.
https://x.com/ShaunLintern/status/1700778868666216542?s=20