More people are using private health insurance for treatment, with a record 500,000 admissions in the first nine months of 2025, while NHS waiting lists remained broadly unchanged.
PHIN and NHS England data show Q1–Q3 admissions were the highest on record for this period. It is 4,000 more than in 2024 and 16 per cent more than 432,000 in the same period back in 2019.
Additionally, the NHS waiting lists were at 7.4 million in 2025, with waiting times for diagnostic tests such as X-rays and MRIs rising by 12 per cent over the past year. The data also shows 1.81 million people waiting for tests in January 2026 and a quarter waiting more than six weeks.
The total private health admissions, including self-pay, reached 710,000 in the first three quarters of the year, putting the market on track to approach one million treatments annually.
Broadstone head of health & protection Brett Hill says: “The growth of PMI-funded treatment shows how integral the private health market is becoming to the nation’s health.
“While we have seen waiting lists decrease slightly over the last couple of years, significant pressures persist, including the ongoing threat of industrial action, and businesses understand that they can no longer rely on the NHS to ensure the good health of their employees.
“As a result, PMI-funded admissions – the majority of which are funded by employer-paid schemes – have risen significantly above pre-pandemic levels. Industry data reinforces this trend with the latest ABI data showing that a record £4 billion was paid out in health claims in 20244, highlighting the scale and cost of this demand.
“It looks likely that we will soon be seeing over 1 million private treatments every year as businesses expand their health insurance coverage and this inevitably feeds through into an increasing volume of claims.”
