UK expenditure on private acute healthcare rose by an estimated 9% between 2015 and 2019, from £7.83 billion to £8.55 billion. Annual growth has slowed to around 2.2% since the 8.1% growth recorded in 2015 due to slower development in the private medical insurance (PMI) market.

Expenditure is expected to decline by 18% in 2020 following the effective shutdown of the majority of private procedures over a large chunk of H1. Despite some PMI premiums having already been paid for in 2020 before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lack of self-funded treatment conducted in H1 2020 will lead to a significant contraction in expenditure by year-end.

However, the market is set to rebound, with growth of 15% in 2021 as the backlog of treatments and surgeries not carried out in light of the pandemic will be rescheduled and spill over into future months.

Over the next few years, there will need to be long-term changes to how routine healthcare is delivered, an extended period of considerable effort at the frontline and potentially an important role for the independent sector if the NHS is to return to a position of meeting the 18-week treatment standard.

• The impact of COVID-19 on private healthcare and how providers and patients will react to the new market conditions.

• How the private healthcare market will adapt to the post-COVID-19 environment.

• The value of individual segments in the market in 2020 and how this has changed in light of the pandemic.

• Consumer interest and attitudes towards private healthcare and PMI.

This Report covers the private healthcare sector and includes the provision of healthcare services through private hospitals and clinics, and the private medical insurance sector, which is so important to the financing of private medical care.

Private residential care and nursing care for the elderly is covered in a separate report published annually by MBD. Other related reports published by MBD include the Occupational Healthcare – UK – May 2020 market.

The private healthcare sector operates alongside the publicly available NHS. There is significant inter-relationship between the two systems, with the private sector relying on NHS consultants for a large segment of its medical manpower. The development of the private sector is largely reliant on NHS consultants being available to undertake private work.

The Department of Health (DoH) also encourages the NHS to utilise private healthcare facilities where this offers an economic opportunity. For this reason, the sector incorporates a number of different scenarios in addition to publicly financed and public supply health services:

publicly financed/private supply

privately financed/public supply

privately financed/private supply

All values quoted in this Report are at current prices unless otherwise specified.

Some totals in tables do not add exactly due to rounding methods.