Private healthcare companies are now caring for four times the amount of NHS patients than it was less than two years ago. Figures from the Department of Health released this week show that a total of 8,400 NHS treatments were carried out by a private healthcare centre in August this year, compared to 2,100 procedures eighteen months previously. While some private health insurance customers are concerned that private hospitals should be differentiating between the level of care that a NHS patient receives compared to a paying customer, it means that the importance of patient choice is now being recognised by the government as well as some existing private health insurance providers like Freedom Healthnet. In fact, these cash plan policy holders have the benefit of choosing where and when they wish to be treated already, included in that is the choice to be treated in an NHS hospital if they wish. So cash plan health insurance customers like those with Freedom now have an even wider choice.

Some private hospitals have started to offer a premium service to those people who have paid, either through private health cover or by paying directly for their treatment. NHS patients now have the option to be treated in one of 149 private hospitals which provide healthcare at a quality standard ‘at a price acceptable to the NHS’. This number has almost doubled in the last year, as there was only 88 private hospitals to choose from in October 2008. Those cash plan private health insurance policy holders who choose to be treated one of these private facilities may then use the money they would have put towards the cost of the treatment on covering travel, money lost from taking time off work or other expenses that come as a result of their illness.