Coronavirus: healthcare institutions attempt to adjust to severe service strains
While Spain requisitions its entire private healthcare system, the UK considers buying up private hospital beds
As the UK prepares for the outcome of an emergency government meeting today, the National Health Service (NHS) has been informed that it has the option to ‘buy up’ thousands of beds in private hospitals to boost capacity in response to the continued spread of Covid-19. And in addition to these negotiations taking place with private health firms about access to some 8,000 hospital beds, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson will tell businesses that the government will buy up their stocks of ventilators once they have been produced.
NHS Chief Executive Sir Simon Stevens said: "The public are right to be proud of the NHS, but the scale of the challenge we face means we can't do this alone. We will be providing further operational instructions to all hospitals to help them prepare. But we need every part of society and every industry to ask what they can do to help the effort.”
However, many, including Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, have hit out at plans to loan out the private hospital beds. “It's disgraceful that private healthcare companies are making a profit out of the coronavirus,” he said in a tweet. "The beds should be used by the NHS. Rent free.”
The GMB Union has also echoed this criticism, tweeting: “This is a public health emergency, not a business opportunity for shoddy private healthcare chums to profiteer from distress. It's time to take back these beds for the NHS.”
Elsewhere, Spain has requisitioned its private healthcare sector. Following the country declaring a state of emergency on Saturday 14 March, Salvador Illa, the Spanish Health Minister, said that the government would be taking over private healthcare providers and requisitioning materials such as face masks and Covid-19 tests. Currently, the entire country has been placed under lockdown.
In the US, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the State Department of Financial Services will require insurance companies to waive co-pays for telehealth visits, a move which the governor believes will encourage people to seek medical help from their homes, reduce strain on the healthcare system and prevent the virus from spreading.
And over in China, where the worst of the outbreak seems to be over, doctors in Wuhan are celebrating as the last of the new emergency hospitals (14 in total) built in response to Covid-19 has been closed.