NHS Trust sent letters to terminally ill patients advertising private clinics

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has been criticised for sending marketing letters to terminally ill patients advertising private clinical services.

The Trust reportedly used patients’ medical data to send hundreds of marketing leaflets advertising a private clinic, Nova Healthcare.

Nova Healthcare has a contract with NHS England to provide specialist gamma knife radiotherapy, and their leaflet read:

“as a patient of Nova Healthcare you’ll benefit from access to the latest and most innovative technologies and therapies and enjoy consultant-led care from clinicians who are world-renowned specialists.”

Apology

The NHS Trust didn’t get the express consent of their patients to be able to share the marketing with them. That being said, the marketing campaign has been rightly criticised as insensitive given the recipients include terminally ill cancer patients.

The Trust realised its mistake after a woman posted the leaflet online, and they issued an apology for sending hundreds of leaflets advertising the private clinic.

One patient left “disgusted”

One patient, Ali Schofield, expressed her disgust when she received the leaflet with her appointment letter. She shared the leaflet on Twitter and said she was “disgusted to receive this with my appointment letter for NHS palliative chemo”.

Ms Schofield also suggested that the NHS are pushing patients in to paying for private care. She said “you can’t get into the place now without seeing adverts for Nova Healthcare.”

Speaking on behalf of those who received the leaflet, Ms Schofield feels she has been made out to be a ‘second-class citizen’:

“I felt really cold when I saw the leaflet because it suggested that I would have better healthcare if I was to go private. It offered me access to the latest technologies and made me think: so what am I getting now? It’s disgusting.”

She does have a point. If the NHS are heavily advertising the private clinic, it would make patients question what kind of service they’re getting now… The whole point of our free NHS health service is to allow quality healthcare for all.

Breaking the rules

NHS England guidelines say it’s forbidden to use correspondence to patients to promote private healthcare. It states: “Trusts that offer private healthcare services should market and promote their private healthcare services completely separately. They should not market or promote these services within their NHS communications to patients and the public, e.g. appointment letters [and] NHS test results.”