Business consultancy firms and private healthcare suppliers are among dozens of companies being sold NHS patient data, campaigners revealed yesterday.

Campaign group Health Emergency director John Lister said the news was symptomatic of the growing privatisation of the NHS.

He told the Star: “It’s another example of the private sector calling all the shots. They get what they want regardless of the credibility of the NHS.”

A list of firms was published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre and covers contracts agreed with companies from April to December last year.

Consultancy firms McKinsey, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young are among those buying data, as well pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca and Bayer.

Some have used the data to formulate marketing strategies, inform their sales teams and work with clients to get new drugs into the NHS.

In total, 104 health and social care organisations (such as NHS trusts) and bodies such as universities and charities were included, alongside 56 private firms.

Consultant firm McKinsey uses pseudonymised but “sensitive” data “as part of our consulting services for clients.”

It said: “The majority of these clients will be NHS clients in England, and the data is used to research performance and outcomes, and identify improvement opportunities.”

According to the report, private heath firm Bupa accessed data that was anonymised but classed as both “sensitive” and “non-sensitive.”

It said this was to “assist the NHS and Bupa Group companies in the UK to improve the quality of healthcare management and service delivery in England by benchmarking performance against national trends.”

AstraZeneca uses hospital patient data for “insights” into areas such as patient pathways and the patterns, causes and effects of health and disease.

Meanwhile Private firm CSL said it specialises “in business intelligence and data management solutions for the healthcare industry.”

Mr Lister said giving companies confidential data did not result in net gains for public health.

He said: “They’re feeding off the NHS to bolster their own businesses and it has shot away confidence in the NHS and those organisations that are supposed to protect this data.

“They’re interested in very small segments of the information that are of benefit to themselves and are not giving anything back.”