Information Director, London Health Emergency The re-election of Blair for a third term of "unremittingly New Labour" policies has already produced a new lurch towards the privatisation of clinical the National Health Service - a policy even Thatcher never attempted.
The first NHS unit to be hived off to the private sector will be the brand new, publicly-funded South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre (SWLEOC), based at Epsom General Hospital.
The Epsom & St Helier hospitals NHS Trust which
SWLEOC has now placed an advert in the official EU Journal inviting private companies to bid to take over its management from Spring 2006: the decision flows directly from the New Labour policy of promoting private sector provision of routine operations in preterence to expanding NHS capacity.
Blair's "modernisation" drive is constructing a new, compenuve market system in health care, effectively reducing the NHS to a Europeanstyle health fund, purchasing care from a range of public and private sector providers -and stacking the odds in favour of the private sector.
Just three days after taking office pledging to act as a "listening Secretary", Patricia Hewitt announced a further massive expansion of spending in private sector Treatment Centres, with £3 billion extra spending over the next five years to buy 1.7 million more operations.
This will effectively double the NHS use of private hospi tals: but at the same time NHS hospitals like SWLEOC have been forbidden to compete for this work. NHSowned Treatment Centres offering modern facilities and swift treatment have been stuck with unused beds and mounting financial problems while contracts signed by the government never diverted NHS patients and funds into new rival private sector units.
In NW London, the state of the art Ravenscourt Park NHS Treatment centre is running s deficit of £12.5 million, while the award winning ACAD treatment centre at Central Middlesex Hospital is also facing empty beds and a cash shortfall.
It is likely that the NHS Trusts running these units will also be driven to privatising these units along the lines of SWLEOC, to open up the poşsibility of bidding for a share of the £3 billion of private contracts. Public assets will be handed over to private profiteers - while the NHS loses out.
By the end of this year, Primary Care Trusts, which hold the purse strings for health services, will have to send at least 10 percent of their NHS elective (waiting list) operations to private hospitals: Hewitt has now set course to increase this still further, towards a longer-term target of 15%.
The tax-funded expansion of the private sector will have a severe knock-on impact on existing NHS Trusts. They will:
* Lose the funding for routine waiting list operations, and have to find ways to deliver other services with reduced budgets.
* Lose crucial nursing and medical staff, who will
Primary Care Trusts,
which hold the purse
strings for health services, will have to
send at least 10
percent of their NHS elective (waiting list) operations to private
hospitals increasingly be poached by growing private treatment contes, leaving front-line NHS services struggling to cope.
* Have to cancel their own plans to expand services to meet government targets for reduced waiting times
* Lose valuable opportunities to train doctors and specialist nursing staff in routine LICallCIls. Some hospitals face the possible loss of their accreditation to teach doctors and nurses, with severe consequences for future skill shortages in the NHS.
* Face a more complex and