the right to choose, external<\/a>, which is a legal right for patients to have options about where care is delivered. <\/p>\nPatients waiting for NHS care can have it delivered at a private practice paid for by local health commissioners.<\/p>\n
Consultant orthopaedic surgeon Arpit Patel said waiting lists could be very different. <\/p>\n
“There can be a huge discrepancy,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I think at the moment in the NHS the waiting list (for orthopaedic care) is around 62 to 64 weeks. <\/p>\n
“At Spire my waiting list is three months.”<\/p>\n
Norfolk GP Dr Clare Aitchison said patients should have the right to choose, but it can disadvantage people who do not know about it or fear they could end up paying. <\/p>\n
She said: “The problem is that at the moment patients who do find out about it (the right to choose) and therefore get access to shorter waiting lists are generally the more educated, maybe more middle class patients anyway. <\/p>\n
“That is increasing health inequality again because people who have higher means are working the system better.”<\/p>\n
She said it was important that everyone was told about the right to choose and the option to have private care. <\/p>\n
An NHS Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board (ICB) spokesperson, said: “The NHS is making progress with reducing waiting times for operations and procedures, particularly for patients who have experienced the longest waits.<\/p>\n
“The target for the NHS in England is to treat 65% of patients within 18 weeks of referral – for orthopaedic operations this currently stands at 48% and we’re working hard to meet this target by the end of March 2026.<\/p>\n
“The majority of operations in Norfolk and Waveney are delivered by NHS hospitals but we do also commission other providers, including some in the private sector like Spire Healthcare, to help people access the care they need more quickly, where appropriate.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nayab Haider, clinical director for Spire, said: “Since we opened on 29 September we’ve already seen 90 patients…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-213115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}