"The record level of activity confirms the importance of private sector capacity and high-quality provision at a time of rising healthcare need."
- Richard Aris - Healthcode
Healthcode has revealed that PMI invoice volumes grew by nearly 8% year-on-year in Q2 2026, with the clearing organisation having processed 3.2 million invoices for private healthcare providers from April to June of this year, worth around £1.5 billion.
This comes after the sector saw growth of almost 7% in Q1.
Invoices for the year to date total 6.3 million, with volumes exceeding one million each month across both quarters.
Invoice volumes for outpatient care reached 2.9 million in Q2, exceeding one million in June alone and rising by 8.5% year-on-year. Invoices for admitted care rose by 2.7%, totalling 281,000, with day cases accounting for 78%. Day cases went up 3.8% year-on-year, although inpatient invoice volumes fell by just over 1%.
Around 2 million PMI invoices processed by Healthcode came from non-hospital sources, such as clinics, private practices and practitioners, while hospitals accounted for around one million.
Of the top ten hospital specialties, orthopaedics remained the largest with 191,000 invoices, although this was lower than Q2 2025. Pathology/haematology saw the biggest year-on-year decline of 7.9%.
In contrast, radiology saw year-on-year growth of 30.2% with 151,000 invoices. The other two hospital specialties to record year-on-year growth were oncology at 11.8% and cardiology at 2.4%.
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Eight of the top ten non-hospital specialties saw year-on-year growth in Q2, with gastroenterology up by 15.1%, while obstetrics and gynaecology increased by 12.2%. Physiotherapy remains the largest non-hospital specialty with 386,000 invoices, up 5.2% year-on-year. Radiology and psychotherapy were the two specialties to record a year-on-year fall in Q2, down by 14.9% and 10.1% respectively.
Total volumes, hospital and non-hospital, for H1 2026 grew across the UK. Northern Ireland saw the largest increase of 11.2% year-on-year, followed by Wales at 11.1%. England saw a rise of 7.2%, and Scotland saw an increase of 6%.
"After we reported strong year-on-year growth in PMI volumes in Q1, our data shows the sector has built on this momentum over the last three months," Richard Aris, director of strategic partnerships and external affairs at Healthcode, said. "The record level of activity confirms the importance of private sector capacity and high-quality provision at a time of rising healthcare need."
