almost always refuse to fund. Childbirth and perinatal services are good examples. Conversely, there are some areas where the NHS does not offer free treatment (cosmetic surgery for vanity purposes, for example) and so the private sector offers a pay-for-service alternative. Historically, avoiding waiting lists was the main reason that patients opted out of NHS treatment and into private care. Queues of many months are common. NHS Consultants, who can run both NHS and private services during their NHS contracts, used to be in charge of waiting lists and had a financial incentive to keep the public waiting list long, to ensure a stream of private income to the private business. Since the Blair government reforms of the NHS, strict rules apply to waiting lists (see hospital choice in the NHS). That and the allocation of better funding in hospitals both reduced waiting times significantly. Most hospital patients are in fact not admitted from a list at all, and those that do, on average, wait less than 9 weeks. Nobody should wait more than 18 weeks. The 18 weeks is not dead time because it includes the time taken to book a first appointment, to conduct all the tests, for the doctor and patient to agree on the desired treatment, and to book and execute an operation or commence the treatment regime. A patient not seen in the 18-week period without just cause has the legal right to go private at the NHS's expense. As of August 2020, 53.6% of patients were waiting for more than 18 weeks. As a result of these improvements, long waiting times reduced, and the private healthcare sector now sells its surplus capacity to the NHS. Dentistry is an area where many practitioners prefer to work privately (because they can set their own fees). NHS dentistry can then be patchy, and some people may find that private dentistry is the only practical option open to them in their locality. There has always been a degree of private medicine conducted within NHS hospitals, with private work being done in those hospitals and the patient being accommodated in segregated accommodation. Until recently, few NHS patients were ever treated in private hospitals. In the English NHS, however, there has been greater willingness to outsource some work to the private sector, and so some NHS patients do sometimes gain access to private health care facilities at public expense. The