After attending the 14th March Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) meeting on behalf of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS group, Dr Chris Day said,
“There were about 10 of us at the CCG meeting. We were treated better than last time and were initially allowed to interrupt with questions, which we did. This seemed to get the doctors talking more freely.
Dr Peter Davies stopped to talk with me in the corridor and gave me references to a number of books, including the paper he co-authored for the pro-market think tank Civitas”
Coca Colonising the NHS- from junk drinks to junk health care?
Dr Peter Davies is the the Clinical Commissioning Executive at Keighley Road Surgery. His 2009 report for Civitas, Putting Patients Last… proposes to CocaColonise the NHS, drawing on ‘The Ten Commandments for Business Failure’ written by Coca Cola Past President and CEO Donald Keough.
The right-wing Civitas think tank has previously promoted pamphlets opposing immigration and asylum, that the-then immigration minister Barbara Roche described as “alarming”.
Calderdale CCG Chief Officer offers to meet privately with Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS
Dr Chris Day also said that Calderdale CCG Chief officer Matt Walsh repeated his offer to meet privately with some of of Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS.
Calderdale CCG replies to Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS questions
The Calderdale CCG responded to a Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS suggestion that ‘Calderdale CCG must hold ALL its planning and commissioning meetings open to the public’ by saying that they are only training/ brainstorming sessions and no decisions will be made there. When pressed, Matt Walsh agreed to have these private meetings minuted.
Calderdale CCG apologized for the problems Dr Chris Day had met in submitting his Freedom of Information request . They agreed to provide ‘more robust procedures’ for the future.
Commenting on this, Dr Chris Day said,
“The current community services contract will apparently run for another year. This is included in the FOI request so we should get more details on that when it comes through.
We were told that the walk-in centers in Todmorden and Halifax would remain open, run by Care UK until September.
We were given stacks of paper with loads of information, some of which could be useful. This includes the finance report on Spire’s and BMI’s overtrading”
Spire’s and BMI’s overtrading – what does this mean?
Spire and BMI are private health care companies that are currently contracted to provide services to Calderdale NHS.
Services provided by Spire include:
- General Surgery
- Urology
- Upper Gastrointestinal Surgery
- Trauma and Orthopaedics
- ENT
- Oral Surgery
- Plastic Surgery
- Gynaecology
BMI supplies podiatry services to Calderdale NHS.
More information about Calderdale CCG’s commissioning plan, involving the purchase of services from Spire, BMI and other private healthcare companies, is available on Calderdale SOS website.
Overtrading means ‘transacting more business than the firm’s working capital can normally sustain, thus placing serious strain on cash flow and risking collapse or insolvency’.
However, Dr Chris Day explained that Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS has information from the Calderdale CCG finance office that the CCG may be working on a slightly different notion of the word ‘overtrading’ – as in, providing more services than they have been allocated due to ‘excessive demand’, but maybe not including judgements from them on capital flows. Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS will investigate what is going on here.
The finance report on Spire’s and BMI’s overtrading in Calderdale & Kirklees includes this information:
Acute activity – Independent Sector Providers
Spire Hospitals
Month 9 activity information was not available at the time of the report. As at the end of Month 8 Spire Elland is over-trading by 265k. This represents a worsened trading position from an over-trade of £181k at Month 7. The primary reason for the worsening position is elective activity, currently over-trading by £110k compared to £70k in M7 (mainly due to Orthopaedics activity currently over-trading by £81 k). Daycase activity is currently over-trading by £102k, compared with an over-trade of £70k in M7 (mainly due to Orthopaedics activity over-trading by £65k).
BMI Hospitals
Month 9 activity information was not available at the time of the report. As at the end of Month 8 BMI Huddersfield is over-trading by £80k. This represents a worsened trading position from an over-trade of £55k at Month 7. The primary reason for the over-trade is inpatient activity, currently over-trading by £74k (primarily due to Orthopaedics activity over-trading by £88k).
Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS – next meeting 18th April
The group’s next meeting will be on Thursday 18 April, 5 – 7 p.m. at Halifax Town Hall. The meeting will discuss dangers associated with privatisation. Dr Chris Day will lead a discussion on Staffordshire Hospital.