21 WHSCT workerson private insurance

The Trust acknowledged a small number of its staff are hedging their bets in terms of health treatment and are paying for private care in monthly instalments.

In a statement the Trust confirmed: “We have been advised that there are currently 21 staff members in the Western Trust who have deductions made from their monthly salary for payment to a private health company.”

The Trust gave no indication of the workers’ levels of pay or whether they are administrative or clinical staff.

Meanwhile, the Sentinel can also reveal that over the past seven years an astronomical £367.9m has been transferred from the public coffers to private health providers to pay for 418,350 treatments and appointments for NHS patients across the entire Northern Ireland health service.

Between 2007/8 and 2013/14, 299,370 new and review outpatient appointments for public patients were delivered by private providers.

And during the same period 118,980 inpatient and day case treatments of public patients were undertaken by private practitioners on the health services behalf.

And the spending hasn’t reduced over the past seven years. If anything it has increased.

According to the Health and Social Care Board (HSCB), which released the information, £40.1 was paid to private companies or practitioners for seeing public patients in 2007/8.

But this leapt to £67m in 2013/14, the highest spend in any of the last seven years.