The desperate hunt for some good news to cheer up private health bosses continues, with the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN) getting rather over-excited at the industry’s most recent quarterly figures.
These showed a sudden increase in numbers to a “Record level” of “self-pay” patients trying to dodge NHS waiting lists by paying privately – mostly older people seeking cataract operations.
It’s true that the numbers of self-pay patients has risen to a new record high: but while the private sector spin doctors focus relentlessly on percentages rather than numbers, it’s worth noting that the actual increase is just 5,000 extra patients in the three months April-June 2025, a near-7 percent increase, from 72,000 in January-March 2025.
If we want to know why such a small numerical increase should have caused so much hype, it’s useful to note that quarterly numbers of self-pay patients have been basically flat-lining on or around 70,000 per quarter (280,000 per year) since a sudden post-Covid jump from roughly 50,000 a quarter before the pandemic to around 70,000 from 2021 onwards.
Full story in The Lowdown, 27 September 2026
