SpaMedica

Multiple concerns in DHSC briefing on private eye clinics and the NHS

There have been concerns for several years on the effect the private companies have been having on ophthalmology in the NHS and on the quality of work carried out by the private companies (see below).

In April 2025, The Sunday Times reported on a leaked briefing from the DHSC about the private eye clinic market and its business with the NHS. The briefing, which was given to Wes Streeting in November 2024, detailed concerns about the effect the five main companies, SpaMedica, CHEC, Newmedica, Optegra and ACES, outlined how money and expertise was being drained from the NHS.

The briefing said: “The delivery of high-volume low-complexity cataracts procedures in the independent sector has rapidly expanded since 2019. NHS England has concerns covering value for money, unnecessary operations, impacts on workforce and training, poor follow-ups and patient safety.”

As warned about for several years, the report noted that NHS hospital trusts were becoming short of consultants; it found that 76% of departments did not have enough consultants to provide a full service, meaning patients with serious conditions that left untreated can lead to blindness, such as glaucoma or wet macular degeneration, were waiting longer to be seen. This situation is outlined in more detail below under Diversion of money, staff and training opportunities.

The Sunday Times article focused on financial issues noting that there were "serious concerns among NHS England officials about some clinics’ financial practices, poor post-surgery care and patient safety." The article noted that private clinics now face investigation over claims they have "artificially inflated costs for the taxpayer, performed unnecessary operations and incentivised high-street optometrists to refer patients to their services."

The DHSC said it was investigating and the NHS Counter Fraud Authority has been called in to examine billing irregularities in the private cataract market.

One aspect highlighted by the article was the practice whereby in exchange for patients being referred for surgery, some providers guarantee a follow-up appointment with a high-street optometrist paid for by the NHS, despite the fact that the rules state that companies should not offer fees as inducements for referrals.  In addition, the DHSC briefing said most patients did not need these follow-up appointments. The CHPI (Centre for Health and the Public Interest) found that in the year to 2023, the NHS paid for 235,000 such appointments, costing almost £16 million.

Another issue is that although companies had agreed to manage all their post-surgery complications, “NHS A&E units are still reporting patients attending A&E for post-operative complications following [private] cataract surgery”.

There are concerns over the quality of work carried out by the companies, with reports that some companies are using poorer-quality lenses than those used in the NHS.  The briefing said: “This suggests that the independent sector has not delivered good value for money in ophthalmology.”

This market has massively expanded over the past decade. Cataract surgery is straightforward and takes an average of 15 minutes per eye to carry out. A clinic can perform up to 16 in a four hour session. With NHS cataract operations costing between £896 and £2,653, the business has proved to be very lucrative for the companies.

A separate financial analysis by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI), published in April 2025 found the five major companies were paid a total of £536 million to carry out NHS cataract surgery in 2023-24, delivering a profit of £169 million.

David Rowland, CHPI director, told the paper that: “The weak market regulations governing the NHS have allowed private companies to gain access to huge amounts of taxpayer revenues and local NHS commissioners have been powerless to stop them.”

Although normally the NHS assesses its population in a particular area and determines a contract for that population, in the case of ophthalmology contracts, once a company has a contract with at least one local NHS area, it can operate anywhere in England and submit a bill to the NHS for payment even in areas where it has no agreement. The CHPI found over a three-year period at the least 84,000 cataract procedures had been paid for by the NHS without any contract in place. As a result the NHS can not control the number of patients. The CHPI estimates that cataract activity should have grown by about 3.5% each year, but instead it rose 47% between 2019-20 and 2023-24, with the costs for the NHS increasing 100% from £439 million to £880 million.

The focus of the NHS Counter Fraud Authority specialist team is the practice of “upcoding”. This is where the complexity of a patient’s treatment, which is given specific codes under an NHS payment tariff, is set at a higher level meaning companies are paid more. The CHPI said there had been a 144% rise in complex surgery in the past five years among private providers.

SpaMedica, the largest private eye clinic company, was singled out by the DHSC briefing for criticism. It was alleged that the company, which had carried out more than a quarter of all cataract operations, coded the majority of its patients “at higher complexity, resulting in the cost per procedure being 8% more expensive than [at] an NHS hospital”.  SpaMedica has denied any wrongdoing.

An NHS England source said the problems had been building for years but no significant action had been taken. They added: “Massive holes have been allowed to exist and no attempt has been made to close them. The companies have just taken advantage of an overly complex system built around too much trust.”

The amount a company can claim for a complex procedure was reduced in March 2024 by NHS England following what it said was significant growth in cataract surgery that was not linked to an increase in demographics or waiting lists.

Conflict of interest

CHPI's April 2025 report - Out of Sight – the hidden profits and conflicts of interest behind the outsourcing of NHS cataract care - highlighted a number of conflicts of interest, including over 100 NHS ophthalmic consultants who own shares or equipment in the private clinics which provide NHS funded cataract care. Some of these consultants have generated millions of pounds in dividends from these arrangements, according to the report, with very few of these conflicts being declared on the websites of the NHS Trusts where they work.

The report noted that "whilst the clinics where these consultants own shares have seen very large increases in income from providing NHS cataract operations, the NHS hospitals where they are mainly employed have seen a large drop in the number of cataract operations delivered over the past 6 years." The conclusion is that this suggests that these conflicts of interest maybe impacting care for patients with more complex conditions, but further research is needed to establish the link between financial stakes in private clinics and the resources available to the NHS.

The report also stated there is evidence that high street optometrists are being offered financial incentives to refer patients to particular private companies.

The estimated potential value to all high street optometrists of referring a patient to a particular private company is in the region of £17 million – £21 million a year.

Diversion of money, staff and training opportunities

In February 2022, ophthalmologists warned that the safety of NHS patients could be put at risk if the private sector is given any more NHS work.

In the letter, signed by nearly 200 ophthalmologists and sent to NHS England and the Royal College of Ophthalmologists and shared with The Independent, they warned of “the accelerating shift towards independent sector provision of cataract surgery” which is already having a “destabilising impact” on safe ophthalmology provision.

They predict that the wide scale use of private providers will “drain money away from patient care into private pockets as well as poaching staff trained in the NHS.” adding that “urgent action” is needed to prevent further work being given to the private sector.

Staff who would normally do extra hours for the NHS are now being offered better paid work doing cataract operations in the private sector, but this means other eye procedures are not being carried out for the NHS and waiting times for these will grow.

Speaking to The Independent, Professor Ben Burton, consultant ophthalmologist and one of the lead signatories of the letter, said: “What’s happening is that staff who could be treating preventable but irreversible sight-threatening conditions like glaucoma, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy are instead doing cataract surgery for private providers.”

The private sector is already heavily involved with the area of cataract surgery; in November 2021, the Royal College of Ophthalmologists reported that in 2016, 11% of NHS cataract procedures in England were delivered by private companies, but by April 2021 there was almost a 50/50 split, with 46% in the private sector and 54% by NHS trusts and treatment centres.

Cataract surgery is the main training ground for junior doctors, they need to complete at least 350 cataract procedures to be able to then manage more complicated work. The use of the private sector means trainees are finding it harder and harder to access the opportunities. The NHS is left with the more complex cases, which are less suitable for training. This is making it more difficult for trainees to successfully complete training and, most importantly, more difficult to develop skilled and experienced surgeons.

The issue was addressed again in December 2023, when Royal College of Ophthalmologists’ president Ben Burton told HSJ the specialty was at risk of becoming like dentistry, where patients face charges for services.

Professor Burton said a review needed to look at the entire commissioning process and argued “generous” tariff rates for cataracts were resulting in some patients with “very mild cataracts getting surgery at the expense of other patients going blind”, which he said was “just wrong”.

He added: “There is a risk that the NHS loses ophthalmology completely, like it has dentistry, in terms of it being a service which is available free at the point of delivery.

“If we are going to try and keep it as an NHS service, then we definitely need to change what we’re doing, because the current system is causing chaos, with huge financial loss to the NHS and it’s not in the best interests of patients.”

Professor Burton said the college “recognises the independent sector can help with reducing backlogs” but urged NHSE not to continue with the approach of “unplanned commissioning [which] means the NHS is losing consultants, money and trainees to the private sector”.