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July-August 2014 Issue 63
INDEPENDENT PRACTITIONER To day THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE FOR DOCTORS WITH A PRIVATE PRACTICE
In this issue
How to attract self-payers
Some tips to help increase your share of this growing element of the private care market P14
Are you a better
Take part in our quiz to find out how the business side of your practice is faring P34
?
THE FUTURE OF PRIVATE HEALTHCARE
What needs to happen now. See page 7
Art of good management The key elements of good management that can make your practice a success P36
Shake-up drags on . . .
...as costs to private healthcare sector top £50m. And there’s still more to come By Robin Stride Independent practitioners face at least an eight-month wait until they can consider the full implications for their businesses of the controversial Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) inquiry into private healthcare. Hearing dates for the three appeals against parts of the final decision in the multi-millionpound investigation will not be heard until next year – on 19 January 2015. Gathering evidence from the appellants – hospital group HCA, doctors’ body the Federation of Independent Practitioner Organis ations (FIPO) and insurer AXA PPP – is then expected to last seven days. Legal challenges usually take at least a month for outcomes to be announced, but a CMA insider this month told Independent Practitioner Today: ‘In a case with so many different issues like this one, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was two months or more.’ But even after the three-member Competition Appeals Tribunal in London makes its decision on the evidence – which is heard in public – the whole affair could drag on for many months more if there are any subsequent appeals over the verdict. Cases could be taken to the In association with
Court of Appeal in The Strand, adding a few more months to the process, which began over three years ago. A further option could be the Supreme Court, but competition inquiry parties in the past have been unsuccessful in getting a hearing at this level. Informed sources this month put the financial cost of the inquiry to the private healthcare sector at a staggering £50m. That is enough to pay for the training of 100 doctors to consultant level or their salary, including employers’ National Insurance, for five years or 1,250 nurses’ salaries for a year. Independent Practitioner Today has
been told the investigation has cost some hospital groups nigh on £10m, while insurers have forked out up to £5m and other parties have paid hundreds of thousands of pounds from much smaller budgets. FIPO wants the Compe tition Appeal Tribunal to quash the stipulation that doctors and hospitals publish fee information and also the CMA’s decision that insurers’ substantial power to constrain consultants’ fees and insurers’ control over consumer choice does not lead to any adverse effect on competition. HCA is fighting CMA plans to force it to sell either the London Bridge and Princess Grace hospi-
tals or the UK’s largest private hospital, The Wellington, and its nearby flagship diagnostic and outpatient unit, The Platinum Medical Centre. The hospital group said this month the CMA’s proposed remedy ‘punishes healthcare innovation and is not in the best interests of patients’. AXA PPP’s appeal alleges that, even after any divestiture, HCA would still retain a relatively high market share in oncology, ‘a key component of the bundle of services over which hospital operators and PMIs bargain’. It is also targeting anaesthetists, submitting that the CMA was wrong to approve group pricing.
MANCHESTER RISING: A view of one of two new private hospital developments planned for the city. See page 2