The OFT (Office of Fair Trading) has confirmed it will investigate whether restrictions placed on consultants by private insurers limit patient choice.
The BMA private practice committee has been lobbying the OFT to examine the fees that insurers insist consultants must charge if they are ‘recognised’ practitioners.
Last week, the OFT formally launched a study into the private healthcare market following a consultation, to which the BMA responded, into the scope of the investigation.
- The investigation will look at:
- The role of consultants: it will consider whether the restrictions placed by private insurers on medical professionals limit choice and quality of care; and it will examine the role of consultants in determining how patients are treated
- The nature of competition in private healthcare provision, including how providers compete on price and quality, and the NHS’s role as a provider of privately funded healthcare
- Whether concentration of provision might be limiting competition in the market
- Whether relationships between providers, insurers, consultants and GPs restrict entry to and expansion of the market
- Constraints on consumers, and how consumers access information about providers and exercise choice.
PPC chair Derek Machin (pictured) said: ‘By and large we are content with the scope of the study, but we are concerned that the transparency of private medical insurer contracts at the point of sale and the ability to switch private healthcare provider have been excluded.
‘We regard these issues as central to some of the problems that patients have in accessing their insurance.’
The study will be completed by the end of this year.
Medico-Legal News Source: BMA
