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Go private for the treatment you need, NHS tells patients

Patients are being refused treatment, discharged too early and pushed towards private referrals, openDemocracy’s largest-ever reader survey has found

By Caroline Molloy
Go private for the treatment you need, NHS tells patients
Both patients and staff have reported an increasing reliance on the private sector to plug NHS gaps | Nick Moore / Alamy Stock Photo
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One in five patients has been told by a doctor or another NHS professional that they would have to go private to get the treatment or test they need. That’s just one of the shocking results from a survey of nearly 7,000 openDemocracy readers – backed up by separate polling commissioned by openDemocracy.

NHS staff echoed the patients’ claims. Nine out of ten (87%) members of patient-facing staff said they had been simply unable to give a patient treatment or a procedure they would benefit from.

The survey, one of the largest of its kind of NHS patients and staff, provides a detailed – and worrying – breakdown of what happens to these patients.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0