Radio 4 covered this tonight - said the contract was awarded three months into the coalition government - but that it was a Labour policy and Andy Burnham was a party to the putting it out to tender. Does anybody have any information on this>
I think Tom Clark's article is the best one in the Guardian's coverage. Obviously Circle (and other private companies) can fuck off out of the NHS, but something has to square the circle of us having, in many parts of the country, the wrong hospitals in the wrong place.
Burnham inherited the tendering-out decision, I understand, but didn't do owt to unstitch it, so I'm not gonna stick up for him on that. Something he needs to be held to
In other words, this godawful outfit were put on a shortlist to privatise a hospital by Labour, in a process that was started by Labour, but finally awarded by their successors.
Hinchingbrooke, as I'm sure those articles attest, has been flat broke and consequently performing very badly for many, many years. Its a place that lurches from one crisis to the next. If I were running a private company looking to take over and run a hospital, I would have been running screaming for the hills when that particular one was offered.
In other words, this godawful outfit were put on a shortlist to privatise a hospital by Labour, in a process that was started by Labour, but finally awarded by their successors.
TonTon wrote: Andy is better than the last govt. But Labour did fuck the NHS and lay a lot of the groundwork for this shit.
How exactly did Labour fuck the NHS?
Labour poured money into it. Yeah, there's PPI and stuff that was poorly thought out but the only reason the NHS celebrated its 60th birthday is because we had a Labour Government.
Health (post-Dobson) got all the Blairites going. Burnham tidied up a fair bit but dropped a bollock with Hitchingbrooke. Though some of it was apparently the area NHS running in that direction.
The Lansley Act wasn't very much to do with earlier stuff- hence they had to lie about it. The (mostly) internal market with a Health Secretary who can actually intervene was different.
England (per Nuffield) outperformed Scotland who got rid of their market ages ago.
There's internal markets and internal markets, innit. Have Scotland really got rid of all the thoroughly pointless accountants and accounting that we have and do in England?
Interesting background from the IFS re pre-Lansley privatisation.
The role of non-NHS providers in delivering NHS-funded care in England increased
markedly from 2006 onward, reflecting explicit policy decisions. In 2006/07 the NHS
spent £5.6 billion (in 2011/12 prices) on care provided by non-NHS providers; by
2011/12 this had increased to £8.7 billion.
That's a fair increase but the overall budget went up by about £20bn, so the private is part of increasing capacity.
TonTon wrote: There's internal markets and internal markets, innit. Have Scotland really got rid of all the thoroughly pointless accountants and accounting that we do in England?
Probably not. Don't you need management accountants anyway?
Tubby Isaacs wrote: I thought the trust had had a manageable deficit a while back then got forced to merge with another that didn't, then went downhill from there.
It was something like that, I'm vague on the precise details. Too many similar Look East reports tend to merge into one after a while.
I'm more coming at it from the view in the local community, which was don't bother with the A&E there, you'll be waiting for ever and the treatment will be iffy when you are seen. Drive to Addenbrokes instead. Where the wait will be nearly as long but at least the level of treatment is reliable. We are talking it having that reputation as far back as 2000 or so, from memory.
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