An NHS trust is taking over a state-of-the-art hospital owned by a major private healthcare group after failing to attract enough paying patients to use it.
Barts Health Trust in London will transform the Nuffield Health facility into a dedicated NHS breast cancer diagnosis and treatment center when it takes control next month.
The not-for-profit private health operator took a 30-year lease on two empty, dilapidated buildings from the Barts trust in 2022 and spent £65 million renovating them for a hospital for heart diseases and joint problems.
But it has decided to close the hospital next week, less than four years later, in a deal designed to grow its business and generate millions of pounds in rental income for Barts Health.
It is selling the lease back to the NHS Trust, whose senior officials are delighted that the Nuffield setback has resulted in what is being called “a windfall” and a chance to expand the care it provides.
The two buildings face each other next to St Bartholomew’s NHS Hospital in the City of London, which, at over 900 years old, is widely considered to be the oldest hospital in England.
The closure raises questions about whether private healthcare is benefiting from the boom in the UK that market analysts have predicted amid long waits for NHS treatments.
It also left around 180 nurses and other clinical staff at Nuffield Hospital facing the threat of redundancy when it closes next Wednesday.
“We don’t want to be happy about this because we’ve had a good partnership with Nuffield Health. But these two buildings have fallen into our hands. It’s like a godsend,” said a trusted Barts source. “We rented two abandoned buildings from them and are recovering two modern, fully equipped hospitals. »
The buildings have 55 beds, three operating theaters, consultation rooms and CT and MRI scanners. It is believed to be the first time the NHS has inherited ready-made health facilities in this way.
The Barts Charity is giving the trust £16.6 million – its biggest ever donation – to cover the costs of transforming the premises into the breast cancer centre, which is due to open in January. It will be “a transformative moment for the health of people in east London”, said Fiona Miller Smith, the charity’s chief executive.
It is unclear how much trust Nuffield Health has for the lease.
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Nuffield Health, a registered charity which also runs gyms, earns almost £1.5 billion in revenue a year, of which just over £1 billion comes from its network of 36 – soon to be 35 – hospitals.
He gave few details about why he decided to close the hospital. A brief statement on its website simply states that it will “resell the lease of our St Bartholomew’s Hospital to Barts Health NHS trust, with a discount expected to take place in December 2025”.
A well-placed source said Nuffield had made “a commercial decision to withdraw from its flagship London hospital” after its expectations for growing patient numbers failed to materialise. A source said the closure showed the capital had more private health capacity than people willing to pay.
Alex Perry, chief executive of Nuffield Health, said its exit “marks a positive conclusion to our partnership with [Barts] trust”. It plans to expand the range of services it offers at its other London locations and treat patients at its Barts site there.
A spokesperson for the group said: “Nuffield Health has agreed to sell our lease on part of St Bartholomew’s Hospital to Bart’s Health NHS trust. This decision reflects the evolution of our London hospital portfolio and allows us to focus our investment on high quality care in our other London hospitals which we have acquired since the launch of the Barts project.”
She hopes to redeploy some staff to other premises and help others find employment with other private care providers in the capital. Barts Health said it hopes to employ some nurses to help staff the breast cancer center.
