Despite the increase in private funding revealed by the new figures, a document published ahead of this week’s meeting of the Health and Care Jersey Advisory Board said the department was forecast to go over its total 2026 budget by £1.7m.
This, the document said, was partly due to “the continued challenge to meet the additional stretch target for growing private patient income”.
The document also said there had been “an impact on the level of private patient procedures performed, and therefore income collected, due to theatre closures due to a lack of cooling system resilience in the extreme heat experienced during May.”
And it added that the impact of “new competition in the local diagnostics market” had also caused the target for private radiology income to be missed by £300,000.
The consequence is that it appears unlikely the health department will reach its target of generating income from private patients of £18.8m by the end of 2026.
That ambition was set out in its Private Patients Services Strategy 2024-2028, which said the island’s “growing and ageing” population was causing “increased pressures” on the health service, as it sought to deliver within “the budgets we have”.
It said increasing income from private patients would reduce the burden on taxpayers and help to bring down public waiting lists.