Up for grabs:
SWLEOC
(right) and
(below) Charing Cross
Hospital Charing Cross Hospital South Entrance A
cine for the Elder! costly caseload of patients, people the private sector has no interest in attracting. The removal of much routine "bread and butter" work from the NHS will force up the unit costs of the services that remain, and undermine the viability of many Trusts that are currently struggling with large deficits.
matters even worse, next year Trusts will face the introduction of "payment by results", a market system which will bring back full-scale competition, but also impose a fixed price tariff that will seriously disrupt the finances of many major hospitals.
Hewitt is spending billions of taxpayers' money on these policies, which have been denounced not only by health unions such as UNISON, but also by the BMA and the Royal College of Surgeons.
And Hewitt has warned that any "failing" NHS hospitals - those that lose out most heavily in this new, unfair competition with the private sector - will be closed down.
She argues that she is in favour of "patient choice", but consistently presses patients to choose private sector provision in preference to local
hospitals: ministers have said nothing of the prospect that if 10 percent or more of waiting list operations are to be diverted to the private sector, many patients will effectively be denied the choice of their local hospital and compelled to "choose" a more distant private provider
The perverse incentives of government pressures on NHS Trusts is also illustrated by a new scheme in West London which involves the cash-strapped Hammersmith Hospitals Trust, which carried a hefty deficit into the new financial year, investing hundreds of thousands alongside BUPA in the expansion of private beds for cancer patients at Charing Cross Hospital.
This appears designed as a pre-emptive move to evade limitations on the expansion : Out July 5
John Lister's new book
Health Policy Reform:
Driving the wrong way dissects the market-style • reforms that are reshaping health care systems around the world,
driven by neoliberal • policies and the World Bank.
Contains studies of 42 countries in all five con• tinents
Order online at www.mupress.co.uk .... of private bed numbers by Foundation Trusts.
NHS managers responded to one journalist's incredulous questioning of this scheme by arguing that "you have to speculate to accumulate"; how many patients: or New Labour voters realise that this is the approach that Blair's govern. ment is actively promoting?
The process is rapidly accelerating. While expansion of private sector contracts can take place under existing legislation, the Financial Times has predicted that ministers are contemplating further controversial measures that would widen the powers of Foundation Trusts, and expand private provision of "primary care" (GP) services
The FT expects laws that will relax limits on Foundation Trusts' right to borrow from the private sector, which were imposed at Gordon Brown's insistence
These and other powers of Foundations were drastically restricted as ministers battled
force the legislation through the Commons, with
Labour MPs VOLI against, and a majority of just 17.
Concerns over the future direction of Foundation Trusts will be heightened by recent reports in the Health Service Journal revealing that Monitor, the independent regulator' charged with overseeing Foundation Trusts, has itself been largely privatised
Two thirds of Monitor's £15.5m first year budget has been spent on hiring private management consultants from the flying ir American whizz-kids from McKinsey consulting including Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea.
What lessons does Ms Hewitt think McKinsey have got to teach the NHS? www.healthemergency.org.uk Health Policy