The National Health Service will have to pay out £187m ($376m) to buy back 14 of the independent sector treatment centres if their five-year contracts are not renewed, the Department of Health has acknowledged.

The “residual value obligations” are part of the deal for the £1.5bn programme to provide extra operations for NHS patients, and were needed, along with guarantees of patient volumes, to attract new entrants into the NHS market, according to the department.