A freedom of information (FOI) request has revealed The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT) shelled out more than £4 million to third-party providers to deliver clinical services in the 2025/26 financial year.
These are private providers that are used by the NHS to deliver a range of health services or care to patients.
The trust’s largest spend on an individual provider was the over £2million paid to integrated healthcare provider Xyla to support the endoscopy, gastroenterology and radiology departments.
Dr Helen Skinner, Chief Medical Officer at UHMBT, said: “We use external providers to provide the additional capacity needed to treat more people locally and more quickly, helping to reduce waiting times and ensure patients can access the care they need as soon as possible.”
UHMBT operates from three main hospital sites in the region: Furness General Hospital in Barrow, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal,
The trust also spent almost £1.2m on the services of Medinet for support across anaesthetics, dermatology and general surgery.
Dr Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, said: “This £4 million figure raises serious questions about the growing reliance on third-party providers to deliver NHS care in South Cumbria.”
Westmorland General Hospital (Image: Google Maps)
Earlier this year, it was revealed that NHS trusts and health boards across the UK had given private firms £241m for scan analysis in 2025, 12 per cent higher than the £216m bill a year earlier, according to the Royal College of Radiologists.
This comes after the UK government announced last year that it would be partnering more with the private healthcare sector to help reduce waiting times to just 18 weeks by the end of the decade.
Then Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said at the time: “When the waiting lists have ballooned to 7.5m, we will not let ideology or old ways of doing things stand in the way of getting people’s lives back on track.
“It would be a dereliction of duty not to use every available resource to get patients the care they so desperately need.”
An Oxford University study published in The Lancet in 2024 found that healthcare privatisation has “almost never had a positive effect on the quality of care”.
It added that outsourcing to private providers can reduce costs but “seems to do so at the expanse of quality of care”.
Dr O’Sullivan said: “Outsourcing is not a sustainable answer to the pressures facing the NHS.
“It diverts funding away from building lasting capacity within publicly provided services and, where commercial providers are involved, allows money intended for patient care to be lost to profits and contracting costs.
“The government must properly fund and staff local NHS services, rather than allowing outsourcing to become further embedded. The NHS should be publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable.”
The other providers used by UHMBT included Circle Health, Primary Eyecare, Radiology Partnerships Ltd and SPW Care.