In October 2025, Indian company Narayana Healthcare acquired Practice Plus Group's secondary care business, its hospitals and surgical centres. Practice Plus Group’s secondary care business has now separated from its integrated urgent care business, including NHS 111 contact centres and out-of-hours GP services, and from its Health in Justice division, which provides healthcare throughout the justice pathway. See the Practice Plus Group profile for details of this business.
Last updated: June 2026
Strategy
Practice Plus Group was formed in 2020 when Bridgepoint, the owners of Care UK, split the company into two - putting the care home business in a separate company (see separate profile).
In October 2025, Bridgepoint sold all PPG's hospitals and surgical centres to Indian company Narayana Healthcare for £188.8 million. At the time Practice Plus had seven hospitals, three surgical centres, three musculoskeletal/diagnostic centres and one ophthalmology centre with 330-bed capacity.
Practice Plus Group’s secondary care business (hospitals, surgical centres, MSK centres, and ophthalmology centres) have separated from its integrated urgent care business, including NHS 111 contact centres and out-of-hours GP services, and from its Health in Justice division, which provides healthcare throughout the justice pathway.
Narayana Health was founded in India in 2000 by Dr Devi Shetty to expand the provision of affordable, high quality cardiac care to India’s mass population. Narayana Health is now one of India's largest private hospital groups and performs 16% of all its cardiac surgery. The company operates more than 30 hospitals and clinics, including three specialising in cardiac care, and treats about 4.2 million patients a year across all specialties.
Former PPG CEO Jim Easton remains executive chair of the remaining PPG businesses (Health in Justice and integrated urgent care), but also takes on a non-executive leadership role under Narayana Health. The new business is now led in the UK by Ross Dowsett previously PPG’s deputy chief executive .
At a press briefing on the acquisition, Dr Devi Shetty and Jim Easton were asked what attracted Narayana to the UK healthcare market, and the answer was the NHS. Easton said PPG will continue to grow its private patient offering, but that fundamentally ‘it always has been and always will remain a provider for whom the NHS is core’.
PPG's private patient business, Wellsoon, launched in 2023, offers prices for orthopaedics as much as 30% below its competitors. The company’s overall strategy of focusing on NHS electives while increasing its self-pay and insured work remains largely unchanged.
Narayana will extend PPG’s physical portfolio. The business plans to replace two sites over the next two years. Easton said it is also ‘actively looking for partners’ to develop sites in new geographies in the north and east of England, and potentially Scotland, where it doesn’t currently have a strong presence.
Formation of Practice Plus Group
In October 2019, Care UK split its business into two separate companies, one covering care homes and the other covering all its healthcare businesses.
On 25 October 2019, Care UK Health & Social Care Holdings Ltd (the parent company) sold its shares in Care UK Healthcare Holdings Ltd to a new company Care UK Healthcare Bidco Ltd, which is outside the Care UK Group structure but still managed by Bridgepoint. Care UK Health & Social Care Holdings Ltd changed its name to Care UK Holdings Ltd.
In October 2020, Care UK Healthcare was rebranded as Practice Plus Group, containing primary care services, urgent care, prison healthcare, diagnostics, ophthalmology, hospital-based services and private healthcare.
For more information on Care UK and its history see the separate Care UK profile
Financials
The most recent financial reports available on Companies House are for the year ending 30 September 2025.
Practice Plus Group Topco Ltd (Company No: 12250218), the parent company for Practice Plus Group Ltd, reported finances for the year ending September 2025. The secondary care sector acquired by Narayana is reported as a discontinued activity with revenue for the year ending September 2025 of £250.3 million (2024: £229.4 million).
Investors
In October 2025 Bridgepoint sold PPG's secondary care division to Narayana Health (India) for £188.8 million. Bridgepoint remains the controlling party of the remainder of PPG, the two divisions - Health in Justice and Integrated Urgent Care.
In March 2010 Care UK was acquired by Bridgepoint in a deal worth £432 million and Care UK was removed from the public markets.
After the formation of the two companies - Care UK and Practice Plus Group - Bridgepoint was still the ultimate parent company and controlling party of both companies. In October 2024, Bridgepoint, sold Care UK to an operating company owned by Care UK management. No financial details were disclosed.
Contracts
NHS contracts
Hospitals and surgical centres
In the October 2025 sale Narayana, acquired PPG's seven hospitals and three surgical centres. Work is carried out for private patients via the Wellsoon brand, and PPG is a leading supplier of elective surgery services to the NHS.
The hospitals are located as follows: Barlborough, Birmingham, Bristol, Ilford, Plymouth, Shepton Mallet, and Southampton. The surgical centres are in Devizes, Gillingham (Kent) and Portsmouth. The company also has the Rochdale ophthalmology unit, MSK services in three locations, and mobile ophthalmology units. NHS work is carried out at all of these sites.
Shepton Mallet Health and Wellbeing Centre
The contract for the Shepton Mallet Health and Wellbeing centre is worth £120 million over eight years. Under the contract, which began in January 2017, Care UK, and now Practice Plus Group, will work with the Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, which currently runs the community hospital and the minor injuries unit (MIU) on the site. However, as this is a prime-provider contract, PPG is able to subcontract work to other firms and organisations. At the moment, PPG runs its Shepton Mallet hospital on the same site delivering a range of private and NHS services.
Diagnostics and Musculoskeletal Assessment & Treatment
According to the website Practice Plus Group MSK & Diagnostics PPG provides clinical assessment and treatment services around the UK:
- PPG MSK & Spinal Service, in Lincolnshire provides lifestyle advice and management, soft tissue and joint injections, initial physiotherapy treatment and diagnostics (MRI scans, ultrasounds and X-ray). In April 2026, PPG's contract for MSK services in Lincolnshire was renewed for 12 months to 2027 with a contract worth £4.1 million.
- PPG MSK, Buckinghamshire specialises in physiotherapy, women’s health advice, acupuncture, multi-disciplinary management of MSK pain and diagnostics (MRI scans, ultrasounds and X-ray)
- PPG Berkshire West provides physiotherapy assessment, treatment, advice and education to patients with acquired musculoskeletal conditions in Berkshire.
Ophthalmology
PPG Ophthalmology provides a glaucoma service, pre-operative assessments prior to cataract surgery and minor eye surgery, and specialises in the treatment of suspected Wet AMD (age-related macular degeneration). The company operates a service in Rochdale. The company also operates ophthalmology mobile units that its website in June 2026 lists as being based in Chorley, Tameside, Bury, Preston, Winchester, Ringwood and Southampton.
Covid-19 contract
In March 2020, Practice Plus Group (as Care UK) was part of the deal with the government for using all its premises and staff for NHS patients during the Covid-19 pandemic. NHS England block booked almost the entirety of the private hospital sector’s services, facilities and nearly 20,000 clinical staff for the foreseeable future to help cope with the surge of covid-19 patients. The agreement only covers England and added around 8,000 hospital beds, nearly 1,200 more ventilators, more than 10,000 nurses, 700 doctors and 8,000 other clinical staff. This deal, which means the NHS is paying all operating costs for the hospitals, has been a lifeline for the company, as the lockdown meant that no private work was possible.
In June 2020, a £5 billion deal to extend the March deal to help the NHS clear the backlog of work was agreed by NHS England and the private hospital companies, however this was blocked by the Treasury. The Treasury did not believe the deal represented good value for money and that the evidence was not substantial. The block-contract basis of contracts with private providers continued, however, as NHS England prepared a new four-year framework contract for increasing capacity. In November 2020, ContractFinder, the government tendering database, reported that Practice Plus Group was one of 67 suppliers awarded a place on the NHS framework contract NHS Increasing Capacity worth in total £10 billion. The framework runs until November 2024.
In October 2020, the HSJ reported that Practice Plus Group (as Care UK) was the recipient of the sixth largest contract for staff and capacity from NHS England, according to a series of contract award notices, however the time period of 2020 this covered is unclear. The contract with Care UK published in October 2020 amounted to £76.3 million. An similar earlier contract award published in June 2020 awarded Care UK £1.3 million.
These block contracts have been criticised after leaks revealed that the capacity paid for by NHS England at companies, such as Care UK, was very under-utilised. HSJ reported that two-thirds of the private sector capacity that was block-purchased by the NHS at a cost of an estimated £400 million a month went unused by the NHS over the summer, despite long waits for operations.
In January 2022, Practice Plus Group became one of ten independent providers which signed a contract to provide extra capacity for the NHS under a three-month deal if Omicron leads to unsustainable levels of hospitalisations or staff absences. The deal, agreed by Sajid Javid, the then health secretary, meant that the providers are paid to be on standby, with the NHS ordered to pay the private hospitals up to £270m, even though they may not treat any NHS patients in return. Leaked letters showed that Amanda Pritchard, head of NHS England, raised grave doubts over the contract, which instructed the NHS to pay private hospitals £75m to £90m a month from NHS England funds for the next three months. The deal could have meant that the NHS had to pay independent hospitals up to £525m if they did end up treating any NHS patients.
The agreement also includes Circle Health, Nuffield Health, Spire Healthcare, Ramsay Health Care UK, Healthcare Management Trust, One Healthcare, Horder Healthcare, Aspen Healthcare and KIMS Hospital.
