NHS Warns ADHD and Autism Care Risks 'Descending Into Chaos'
NHS managers warned that autism and ADHD assessment services risk “descending into chaos” as unregulated private providers capitalise on soaring demand — with one health board’s costs rising tenfold in a year to £1.5m a month, and another’s annual spend jumping from £4m to £30m. Assessments range from £300 to £3,000 with no set NHS tariff. The driver is the “right to choose” policy that lets patients bypass long NHS waits; the government promises a “new national approach” soon.
The system has produced a perverse machine: NHS waits so long they are effectively refusals push families toward a private assessment market with no tariff, no regulation and every incentive towards diagnosis — billed straight back to the NHS at whatever the provider names. The tenfold cost explosions are what an uncapped demand meeting an unpriced supply looks like, and the losers are threefold: taxpayers, patients whose assessments may not survive scrutiny, and the genuinely waiting whose services are drained to pay for it. Yet the underlying demand is real — recognition of neurodivergence has outrun every system built to assess it, in schools as in clinics. Watch the promised national review — a tariff and a regulator are the obvious fixes, and both make enemies.