After a strong start to 2025, there was a small dip in insurer-funded healthcare during Q2 but the sector finished on a high, according to the latest invoice data from Healthcode.
The UK’s official clearing organisation for medical invoices validated more than 2.94 million invoices in Q2. This represented a slight rise of 1.4% year-on-year but was 0.7% lower than Q1. However, a busy Q1 meant that the total volume for the first six months of 2025 was still up 4% year-on-year at 5.9 million. In addition, insured activity regained momentum by the end of the quarter: the volume for June (999,097) was up by 0.5% on May and by 9% year-on-year.
All private hospitals and more than 70% of practitioners, practices and clinics submit invoices to all the major insurers through Healthcode’s secure Clearing Service accounting for more than £1.3 billion revenue in Q2. This invoice data is an important measure of market activity as well as showing details such as treatment setting, specialty and region.
Healthcode’s Managing Director, Peter Connor said: “Although our Q2 data shows that insured activity slowed slightly over Spring, this proved to be a temporary lull. We’ve seen volumes recover in recent weeks across all regions and settings while our current full-year projection anticipates another year of growth for insured healthcare.
“In the context of the Government’s new 10 Year Health Plan which looks to make use of private sector capacity, it’s in everyone’s interest to see the private sector thrive, alongside the NHS.”
Here are the headlines from Healthcode’s analysis of invoice activity in Q2 2025:
Treatment setting
Invoice volumes from hospitals were unchanged from Q2 2024 while those from non-hospital settings increased by an average 2% year-on-year in Q2.
In hospitals, there were 2.7 million invoices for outpatient care in Q2 (up 1.6% year-on-year) and 273,747 invoices for admitted care (no noticeable change on Q2 2024).
Hospital specialty
As usual, Orthopaedics was the biggest hospital specialty in terms of invoice volume with 193,000 in Q2 (up 10% year-on-year on average). Radiology was second with 116,000 but this represented a fall of 15% compared with Q2 2024. Invoice volumes for Cardiology and Obstetrics & Gynaecology are lower than these hospital specialities but both saw year-on-year growth in Q2 (up 10% and 8% respectively).
While most of the top ten hospital specialties saw a dip in activity in April and May, all but radiology and pathology/haematology had returned to year-on-year growth in June.
Countries and regions
Of the UK countries, Scotland recorded the biggest year-on-year increase in invoice volumes in Q2 (up 10% on average), followed by Northern Ireland (up 7%) and Wales (up 2%). Invoice volumes in England were on a par with Q2 2024 but this is where most private healthcare activity takes place.
In Q2 the only English regions to record year-on-year growth were the South West (up 7% on average), Yorkshire and the Humber (up 3%) and London (up 1%) while the West Midlands saw no change. This contrasts with Q1 when all regions were up year-on-year. While April and May were relatively quiet compared with 2024, there was a return to growth across the country in June.
