Tag Archives: Jeremy Hunt

Health & Social Care Select Committee report on Accountable Care Ducks endorses Hunt’s quackery while rapping quangos over knuckles

Posted on by
Reply

How can this Report be independent when you read the identity of two of the three special advisers, and find in footnote 10, the conflict of interest declaration  for Chris Ham & Anna Charles (both employed by the Kings Fund)?  Ham says:

“The Kings Fund is working to support accountable care systems in England and some of the funding for this work has been provided by NHSE. Our work on STPs was funded entirely by the Kings Fund.”

Charles says:

“The Kings Fund is providing support to accountable care systems in England. This work has been partly funded by NHSE. Our work on STPs was funded by the Kings Fund.”

Last winter, NHS Detectives warned of Kings Fund fingers in the Health Select Committee Inquiry’s pie, when we found that the House of Commons briefing on Accountable Care Organisations was heavily dependent on the Kings Fund think tank for a summary of the core features of Accountable Care Organisations.

We pointed out that the Kings Fund is far from impartial in its views on Accountable Care Organisations and their variants, Accountable Care Systems and Partnerships. Continue reading →

Secretive Sustainability and Transformation Plans are likely to have cost NHS over £16 million in management consultancy fees

Posted on by
1

Underfunded NHS clinical commissioning groups could be spending over £16 million between them, for advice from management consultants on the secretive shake-up of health and social care in England.

Unite, with 100,000 members in the NHS, said that health secretary Jeremy Hunt needs to come clean on the spending on management consultants in relation to the 44 Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) for England.

Unite calculated that £15 million is the likely cost, after the media revealed that NHS chiefs in Coventry and Warwickshire had forked out £343,000 to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for advice on saving money in their local STP plan.

However this may well be a significant underestimate. The British Medical Association has just reported that health leaders drawing up the North Central London STP have paid £2.3m to eight different companies – including accountants Deloitte and management consultants McKinsey – for services stretching from ‘administrative support’ and ‘financial modelling’ to ‘communications support’.

Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker reported in October last year that the 11 West Yorkshire and Harrogate Clinical Commissioning Groups had between them paid £378K to management consultancy company Attain  to set up and run the West Yorkshire Sustainability and Transformation Plan Programme Management Office. Continue reading →

Halifax says only clowns would cut our NHS

Posted on by
1

Jeremy Hunt, listen up!  Halifax loves the NHS – the people united will never be defeated! (Especially by a bunch of clowns)

A brilliant crowd, made up of hundreds of people from babies to grannies, ambled through Halifax today to deliver the message that only clowns would close Calderdale A&E and cut our NHS. Continue reading →

Conflict of interest fears as Hunt appoints NHS adviser with big private healthcare interests

Posted on by
1

Unite has today (Friday) called on the Secretary of State for Health to explain why he
has appointed a former M&S boss, with interests in a private healthcare firm that is
eyeing up stealth-privatised NHS contracts, to an influential role in the management of
the NHS.

According to the Guardian, the role is to advise on how to build up new management to
transform failing hospitals. Update: This remit was extended in early 2015 to include how best to equip clinical commissioning groups to deliver the Five Year Forward View.

Apparently what was good for Marks & Spencer will be good for the NHS.
Continue reading →