LaingBuisson Private Acute Healthcare Conference

We recently attended Wimpole Street for LaingBuisson’s 23^rd Private Acute Healthcare Conference.

Both before and after Paterson, demonstrating ‘quality’ has become an increasingly important issue for the private acute sector. So, the theme of this year’s event was ‘the changing referral pathway’. With most of the day’s talks and panels looking at this theme from various angels.

Hannah Fairclough, our Customer Accounts Assistant, takes us through the day’s proceedings and her thoughts of the day.

The morning session

It was an early start. So I was pleased to arrive to a needed coffee and light breakfast reception. This doubled as the first networking opportunity of the day. Then at 9am we all filed into the main auditorium where we were officially greeting by Ted Townsend before launching into first set of the day’s talks.

Driven by desires to improve quality and patient outcomes, as well as control costs. Ted asked if the private patient pathway is becoming increasingly standardised. And is this a good thing? The audience was poised with questions and given the chance to submit these to the panel.

It was particularly interesting to hear Shams Maladwala from the Royal Marsden discuss ‘The Future of PPUs’ and the Royal Marsden’s unique approach to their private patient’s treatment plans. Can PPUs’ offer the best of both worlds? Are the perceptions in the media changing?

It was also interesting to listen to Ian McDermott’s views on ‘Is Pathway Management a Race to the Bottom?’ where he quite sensibly concluded it’s best for all parties within private healthcare, not just the patient, to get any surgery done correctly and responsibly the first time around.

The afternoon session

After lunch I opted to attend the two Track A panels before the next networking break. These were: ‘The Changing Referral Pathway: What does it mean in practice for operators and insurers?’ and ‘Reasons to be Cheerful? Where can operators look for growth outside PMI?’ Both offered more in-depth insights into some of the topics that had been touched on throughout the morning sessions. Such as whether there is hope in revenue terms for hospital operators outside of serving PMI and NHS patients. And quite a bit of focus on how new technologies, such as online GPs, are driving change within the sector.

After the afternoon break everyone then went back into the main auditorium for the talk ‘Proton Beam Therapy arrives in the UK – What can we expect?’ with Prof. Karol Sikora, Ron Gilden and Moataz Karmalawy. I found this talk the most interesting; so, it was a shame that the number of people in the room had dwindled quite noticeably since the morning.

All three presentations and the panel discussion afterwards were very informative and offered us more insight into the benefits of Proton Beam Therapy. As well as some of the science, technology and cost behind it. The discussion left me excited and optimistic for the future. For a time when Proton Beam Therapy is more accessible and affordable to everyone around the world in need of cancer treatment.

Final thoughts

Once again LaingBuisson brought together a range of views about what the future holds in store for the sector, and how best to prepare for it. I found lots of ‘food for thought’ and look forward to the 24^th Private Acute Conference.