This is what happens when there is profit to be made from health care. Dog eat dog for the money. An absolute disgrace. As bad as some doctors and nurses wanting to charge a fee to see a GP.
Analysis: battle with GPs led to Circle's retreat
Battle with GPs led to Circle’s retreat from Hinchingbrooke hospital
Contract began with high hopes and company claimed small successes, but it became clear things were not going to plan
Hinchingbrooke hospital. Photograph: Terry Harris/Rex Features
When the coalition government privatised Hinchingbrooke hospital in 2012, there were high hopes. Since 2006 the hospital had been in deep trouble, losing five chief executives in as many years, building up £40m of debt and undergoing two independent external reviews.
The second review, in 2011, led to the colorectal department being moved to another hospital after six serious incidents, two of which had led to patient deaths and another of which had involved a medical instrument being left inside a patient. Things could not get worse.
For a little while they didn’t. Then at the end of 2012 Circle lost its chief executive, not long after it
posted higher than expected losses. In 2013 the hospital’s latest boss
departed.
Circle claimed small successes in turning around patient confidence, and
performance at its accident and emergency department. However, it became clear that things were not going to plan. A low point came this summer when staff were accused of treating patients in an
“undignified and emotionally abusive manner”.
At the heart of this was an unseen battle between local GPs and the hospital over who should profit from patients. In the new NHS structure, family doctors were meant to pay Hinchingbrooke for every patient they sent there – and with money tight, GPs saw their budgets being drained to fund the hospital.
Worse was that Circle aimed to make profits, even if it meant GPs sitting on losses. Last March when the hospital looked as if it would finally break even, GPs in the area initially slapped a £5m fine on the hospital for “poor performance”. After much wrangling this was lowered to about £1m. But a company aiming to make money from a hospital with a £100m budget could not continue to risk having its profits siphoned off by GPs.
None of this should have surprised anybody. Andrew Lansley, the then health secretary, was a local MP and well aware of the perils of pitting doctor against doctor. Unhelpfully, he removed a layer of NHS management that specifically managed these local turf wars.
We have been here before. In 2003 New Labour signed a three-year “franchising” deal allowing a private company, Tribal Secta, to run Birmingham’s Good Hope hospital. The contract was
terminated eight months early after the hospital deficit increased from £839,000 to £3.5m.
That debacle left pro-marketeers in every party with nowhere to turn in debates about policy. To improve healthcare, Labour flooded the NHS with taxpayers’ cash. That era ended when the banks went bust".
Osbourne want to return the health service back to pre NHS 1948.
At least some in the BMA can see what will happen when the TTIP is signed.
BMA - Keep NHS free from trade treaty, urge doctors
Overseas examples
London foundation doctor 2 Rita Issa said: ‘The TTIP is a continuation of the process we have seen moving the NHS away from being a social body acting in the interests of patients.’
She cited cases where companies in other countries had sued governments for taking public healthcare actions that threatened their business investments.
The potential for so-called IP (investor protection) and ISDS (investor to state dispute settlement) mechanisms used by some corporations to attack public services have sounded alarm bells for many.
The mechanisms are contentious as they give foreign corporations the right to sue countries in which they are investing if they believe a government decision, such as standardised tobacco packaging, has unfairly impacted on their investment.
Dr Issa asked: ‘Do we really want to open our doors to American companies and laws and drag our healthcare system [down] to the level of the States?’
She added that the Canadian government had successfully managed to exempt its healthcare system from free trade agreements".
But not this anti EU Tory government who want to hide behind 'free trade' to get their, and their friends, grubby hands on the £130 billion worth of taxpayers money. The Tories could 'bat for the UK NHS' but decided not too. A titanic disaster that the UK is being steered into and the effects on peoples lives will be monumental.
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