New figures reveal total paid by private patients

New figures reveal Jersey's health department raised more than £7m by charging patients to be treated privately in 2025 - an increase of 22% on the previous year.

And the department appears on track to make yet more money from private patients this year, according to data for the first six months of 2026.

Despite this, the Health and Care Jersey Advisory Board was this week told income from private patients had not increased in line with targets - in part, due to the closure of operating theatres "in the extreme heat experienced during May".

A 2024 strategy confirmed the government's aim to "significantly" increase income from private patients by 2028, to help fund public healthcare services.

The new figures were published by Health and Care Jersey in response to a freedom of information request submitted by the BBC.

They show that total income in 2023 from private patients was almost £5.4m, while the following year it was just under £5.8m.

But in 2025, the total raised by the department from providing private care rose to almost £7.1m.

And between 1 January and 30 June 2026, private patients paid almost £3.9m to Health and Care Jersey for their treatment - a figure which, if replicated in the second half of the year, would result in total income in 2026 of almost £7.8m.

Despite the increase in private funding revealed by the new figures, a document published ahead of this week's meeting of the Health and Care Jersey Advisory Board said the department was forecast to go over its total 2026 budget by £1.7m.

This, the document said, was partly due to "the continued challenge to meet the additional stretch target for growing private patient income".

The document also said there had been "an impact on the level of private patient procedures performed, and therefore income collected, due to theatre closures due to a lack of cooling system resilience in the extreme heat experienced during May."

And it added that the impact of "new competition in the local diagnostics market" had also caused the target for private radiology income to be missed by £300,000.

The consequence is that it appears unlikely the health department will reach its target of generating income from private patients of £18.8m by the end of 2026.

That ambition was set out in its Private Patients Services Strategy 2024-2028, which said the island's "growing and ageing" population was causing "increased pressures" on the health service, as it sought to deliver within "the budgets we have".

It said increasing income from private patients would reduce the burden on taxpayers and help to bring down public waiting lists.

Since the publication of that strategy in April 2024, Health Minister Tom Binet has on a number of occasions indicated that charges might have to be introduced for certain health services that are currently offered for free.

However, plans to charge some patients for using A&E remain on hold, while an attempt to make the wealthiest islanders pay to access healthcare in the UK were axed due to what Binet described as "the amount of angst" the proposals caused.

In early December 2025, he also asked hospital consultants to temporarily take on more private work, to ensure the department remained within its annual budget.

"I would encourage all patients who have health insurance to help our public patients by using that insurance when accessing hospital services," said Binet, in response to questions from the BBC about the new figures.

"Looking further ahead, we need to have an open discussion about how healthcare is funded as demand grows and costs continue to increase globally.

"One of the options that may need to be considered is whether greater use of health insurance could play a larger role in helping to meet those costs, as it does in many other jurisdictions."

The freedom of information response also showed people being treated privately by Health and Care Jersey represented 20% of the patients added to elective waiting lists in 2024.

In 2025, it was 21%, and so far this year, 22% of patients added to waiting lists intended to pay for their treatment.

But despite the upwards trend, proportionally fewer patients are now opting for private care than in the years 2021 (26%), 2022 (26%) and 2023 (25%).

This appears to be because while the number of people seeking private treatment each year has remained fairly consistent (between 1,996 in 2021 and 2,310 in 2025) the number being added to public waiting lists has increased more markedly, from 5,673 in 2021 to 8,692 last year.

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