Some believe that privatization will shorten waits or improve services. In fact, privatization simply sucks money out of healthcare into the for-profit corporations. A case study of this and its impact on nursing in a hospital redeveloped as a P3 follows:

At North Durham in England, the national government provided some smoothing monies in order to help the development of the P3. In this P3 hospital 27% of the expenses were for higher borrowing costs, fees and profit for the private corporations, all needless if the hospital had remained public. The higher costs of the P3 created what has been coined in Britain as the "affordability gap". The government supplements were not enough to cover the higher costs. Beds and staff had to be cut in order to make the new hospital affordable.

Professor Allyson Pollock and a team of researchers studied the business plans for the P3. They found that staff cuts were budgeted to fall largely on qualified nurses. Between 1996 and 2000 the government and hospital planned to reduce their numbers by 13%, to be replaced, in part by healthcare assistants. Ultimately, the hospital was not able to reach this target. Nonetheless, as of 2001, there were 12% fewer qualified nurses in the North Durham hospital than in 1996. Across all of the British P3s studied, nurses have been cut on average 14%.

The Guardian newspaper reports: "Back in the new hospital these dry statistics are translated into day-to-day experience. Senior nurses talk with distress of being unable to give basic care."