Medics and whisky exec launch luxury clinic

Published on Saturday 17 January 2009 13:09

A CONSORTIUM of leading medical consultants has teamed up with a former Glenmorangie executive and a London-based healthcare accountant to create Scotland's first luxury private healthcare clinic.

Dr Martin Errington, former drinks chief Alasdair Muir and Ray Stanbridge will next month open The Edinburgh Clinic, providing a range of treatments from keyhole surgery for professional sports injuries to scanning for major diseases.

Finance director Stanbridge says the 8m project, at a time when discretionary spending in Scotland is coming under increasing pressure from the economic downturn, aims to tap into Scotland's professional sports clubs and take market share from existing private hospitals.

He said: "There really is nothing quite like this north of the Watford Gap. Although these sorts of niche clinics are common in London and the South-east, we are the first of a kind in Scotland. When we drew up our business plan three years ago, Edinburgh's financial community was growing rapidly. That may not be the case now, but there is still an increased demand in private healthcare.

"The rate of private medical insurance in Edinburgh is much higher than in the rest of Scotland and still quite high compared with the rest of the UK."

The UK private hospital market is dominated by three major players, BMI Healthcare, Nuffield Hospitals and Spire Healthcare, which runs Edinburgh's Murrayfield Hospital. They are served by the healthcare insurance market comprising Bupa, BPP and Standard Life. Errington, who heads up 25 different consultants, aims to treat more than 50 patients a day.

The move comes amid a growing trend for surgeons and consultants to enter the private sector forming syndicates marketing their skills.

Stanbridge said: "There are 250,000 more managers in the NHS than there were 10 years ago, which is creating a frustration among consultants about what they deem to be management involvement and the pressure of all the deadlines imposed on them. A lot of consultants want to practise medicine in the way they wish rather than what they are told to do by a manager, which is driving consultants to do it themselves."