Coronavirus - Private hospitals and ITU beds.

[Babyroobs]

Does anyone know whether, if in a crisis situation that we may be facing, would ITU beds in private hospitals be used for the NHS ? Is it possible for people to pay for an ITU bed if they have enough money ? Would private health insurance cover that ?

Interesting question. ITU in private hospitals are almost exclusively for post operative patients, so I’d guess not.

In a "standard" major incident (train crash, terrorism etc) the plan is to move the most stable pts from NHS ITU beds to private. However moving critically ill patients is never straightforward and very time / people intensive (3 or 4 staff per move) and this is really a last resort.

There are scary reports on Twitter from Italian drs about how their critically ill patients are being managed in far from ideal environments because demand simply outstrips supply. An NHS patient would never receive a bill for a private transfer

We don't have private ICU facilities here like we do in the NHS - they're mostly post op and do not have anywhere near the same level of medical cover as true nhs icu beds. So no, nice idea, but sadly most private patients if they got to ICU level of sick would just be transferred over to the nhs beds

It would appear this is the one time money can’t buy health....

Almost all private doctors who could look after these patients work for the NHS, if they have colleagues off because of illness they won’t have time to split themselves between two sites. More likely the ventilators will be moved to nhs hospitals if that is where we end up.