There are problems inside the NHS too, as policies begin to unravel, past failures hit the headlines, and a disgruntled former top manager has become the first to speak out on the regime within the Department of Health.
Former DoH workforce director Andrew Foster recently revealed to the Health Service Journal what previously could only have been guessed by outsiders: the turmoil created within the NHS by Blairite policies.
After the initial honeymoon period of consensus around the increase in funding and the NHS Plan in 2000, major policy documents driving the NHS were "just sprung on an unsuspecting
The most controversial of all, last July's circular from then NHS chief executive Nigel Crisp, was produced "by a very small group of very senior people", and came as "a huge surprise" even to many top managers.
Some of the policies rammed through in this way are now running into crisis.
Hewitt's plans for a £3 billion second wave of "Independent Sector Treatment Centres" to treat waiting lists cases diverted from NS units, which was to have been announced this summer have been put on the back burner, as local health chiefs have complained that the new private units would duplicate existing NHS facilities and represent a waste of money.
Seven schemes have already been scrapped, and there have been no bids received for three schemes: decisions on another 14 have been deferred for
Meanwhile Hewitt has also been obliged to launch a "clinical audit" of the quality of the surgical work carried out in the 21 treatment centres already operational, after MPs, doctors and others expressed concern at low standards.
More damaging revelations have cenTENS SOPS.
(PFI). bilities on to the NHS Trust. period of the contract! dancies. tred on New Labour's ideological fixation with using private sector cash to fund new NHS hospital developments through the Private Finance Initiative
The Commons Public Accounts Committee has just published a damning report exposing the massive £95m windfall profits pocketed by the Octagon consortium in the aftermath of building the £158m Norfolk & Norwich Hospital by "refinancing" the initial loans they had raised - over an extended 39 year period, dumping additional costs and liaAnd while the private sector grabbed its bonus up front, the £34m graciously handed to the NHS from the total windfall payment of £129m takes the form of a reduction in payments over the entire
The bonus for shareholders amounts to almost 60 per cent of the cost of the building, and comes on top of guaranteed index-linked profits from leasing the building to the NHS and supplying support services. Meanwhile the £22m cash crunch faced by the Trust has forced the announcement of 700 redunResearch from NHS pressure group Health Emergency suggests that the private companies behind current and planned PFI projects in the NHS stand to make similar windfall profits of up to £3.3 billion - while the inflated monthly payments for PFI hospitals will be stripped straight out of patient care budgets.
While re-financing bonuses at the level achieved at the Norfolk & Norwich will be difficult to achieve now, a 20% windfall return could still be achieved on many schemes. With current NHS PFI schemes worth £4.6 billion this would add up to £920 million. But the three most recently approved PFI schemes (Barts, Birmingham and St Helens) are worth £2.2 billion adding a potential windfall profit of £440 million.
And with a further £10 billion worth of NHS PFI's in the pipeline, there could be another whacking f2 billion worth of bonus payouts up for grabs.
When Tony Blair talks about modernising the NHS what he means is more PFI and bigger and fatter profits for the shareholders of the private companies involved, and all at taxpayers' expense.
To stop more beds being closed and more nurses sacked, join the campaign to Keep Our NHS Public - at www.keepournhspublic.com