Value for money of the independent sector treatment centre (ISTC) procurement has been ensured by running a robust and competitive procurement process, and by benchmarking procedure prices between contracts and comparing them to the national health service equivalent cost and the prices paid by the NHS to the independent sector under spot purchase arrangements.
Across the full period of the wave 1 ISTC contracts, the average percentage cost compares favourably with the historical cost to the NHS of spot purchasing from the independent sector.