SoR evidence included in House of Commons report
 The Society is among of a number of professional and trades union bodies quoted extensively in the House of Commons Health Committee report PDF 1.2MB regarding independent sector treatment centres.
The Society’s comments centre on the conviction that reductions in waiting times would have occurred “if the same level of investment (finance and infrastructure) had been channelled directly in to NHS facilities. The ISTCs are not innovative, they have merely increased capacity.”
The evidence is equally scathing about whether ISTCs have had adverse effects on local NHS services: “NHS staff and capacity was diverted to the time consuming task of identifying suitable cases for the IS. Additional NHS time was then spent on follow up work where the IS failed to conduct the relevant examination or was unable to produce sufficient clarity of image to produce a satisfactory medical report. Members further advise us that some examinations had to be repeated in the NHS because overseas radiologists employed by the IS and ISTCs to report images from a remote location, failed to produce reports with sufficient clarity to determine further treatment. Many of these problems could have been resolved had the entire procedure been conducted within the NHS unit.”
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