Tag Archives: NHS privatisation

Councillors! Test your understanding of #Calderdale Accountable Care System

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Calderdale Council Cabinet has resolved that the Council will take more steps towards setting up an Accountable Care System to run local NHS and social care services.

Dubbed a “place based integrated health and care system”,  it is due to be set up in shadow form in April and to go live in June 2019, according to a paper prepared for the 12.2.18 Cabinet meeting.

As the Cabinet resolved this issue in the meeting, Full Council will not debate or vote on it at its Meeting on 11th April.

Papers prepared for the Cabinet seem to have been written, in gobbledygook, by a student of Humpty Dumpty:

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NHS privatisation in Calderdale is almost twice the national average

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Four years ago, Craig Whittaker assured me there would be no privatisation of the NHS.

In 2015-16 Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group spent 13% of its £267,919,000 budget on non-NHS (ie private sector) providers.

This is not counting what it spends on social care, which is mostly privatised, and on voluntary sector organisations, which is “soft” privatisation.

When you count those in, 21% (£56,510,000) of the Clinical Commissioning Group’s budget goes on non-NHS providers. Continue reading →

Bain Capital profits hugely from sale of privatised NHS plasma supplier to Chinese investment group

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A Chinese investment group, Creat, has just bought the privatised NHS plasma supplier from Bain Capital – only three years after the American private equity firm bought the NHS’s Plasma Resources UK from the Department of Health in 2013.

This privatisation evaded Parliamentary scrutiny, as it was announced just as MPs were about to take six weeks holiday.It  involved the sale of 80% of Plasma Resources UK’s equity to the US private equity firm Bain Capital for £90m, plus a Bain Capital Investment of an extra £50m in the firm to create a “UK Life Sciences Champion.”

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“Patient choice” and NHS use of the private sector runs down NHS care and penalises the poor and elderly

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A recent study –  the first to look at the impact on NHS provision of diverting NHS funds to the private sector – shows that private sector contracts are associated with a decrease in NHS provision and an increase in treatment inequalities.

This finding brings home the urgent need for the NHS Reinstatement Bill, which was
successfully reintroduced to the House of Commons by Labour MP Margaret Greenwood on 13 July, with support from Labour, Green, and Lib Dem MPs.

Drafted by barrister Peter Roderick and Public Health Professor Allyson Pollock, the Bill proposes to fully restore the NHS as an accountable public service by reversing 25 years of marketisation, abolishing the purchaser-provider split, ending contracting, and re-establishing public bodies and public services accountable to local communities. Continue reading →

We must stop the government’s willful destruction of our national maternity care

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NHS staff and patients should not stay silent. It is time to demand an end to the willful destruction of our national maternity care before we see further tragedy, writes Jessica Ormerod, former Lay Chair of of Lewisham’s Maternity Services Liaison Committee which represents the interests of Lewisham women and their infants.

A coroner’s finding that baby Kristian Jaworski  died because his mother was denied a caesarean section due to cost is shocking. There can be no recompense for such a tragedy for this family; the least that can be offered them is the certainty that this will never happen again. But the senior coroner Andrew Walker has warned the Department of Health:

“there is a risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken”.

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Why NHS campaigners oppose the privatisers’ NHS Commission Bill

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Plain Speaker would urge everyone campaigning to save our A&Es in Calderdale and Huddersfield to beware of this NHS & Social Care Commission Bill and not to give it your support.

Many NHS campaigners across the country are signing a public letter stating that we are extremely concerned that the Bill for the Commission is misleading at best, and deceitful at worst. We urge MPs who have the interests of the public, rather than the vested interests of the private health sector, as their main concern, to refuse support for this Commission. Continue reading →

Hunt’s Junior Doctors’ contract paves way for American corporate takeover of the NHS

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GP Dr Bob Gill uncovers the real reason for Hunt’s attack on junior doctors. Junior doctors’ reduced income (through loss of unsocial hours pay) and increased hours performing routine work in evenings and weekends, would increase profitability for the private health care companies that are set to take over the NHS as the Five Year Forward View rolls out.

The government’s latest assault on the NHS involves imposing a new contract for junior doctors that will see their salaries slashed by 30%, with a requirement for evening and Saturday work. The excuse is that this change will provide a 7 day service and improve patient outcomes on weekends.

The reality is that more qualified staff are being driven out, in preparation for the deskilling that is always part of healthcare privatisation and corporate takeover.

This is mapped out in NHS England’s Five Year Forward View – the brainchild of Simon Stevens, previously an executive at the global American health insurance company UnitedHealth and now head of NHS England. Continue reading →

Growing Futures are very shocked at what’s happening to the NHS

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As a group working for a fair, healthy, sustainable food system that can help solve the epidemic of obesity and diabetes caused by the current dysfunctional food system, Growing Futures recently took part in the Voluntary Action Calderdale workshop on Understanding how the NHS works in Calderdale.

The  main information at the Workshop was that the NHS in Calderdale now operates just like any marketplace.

The VAC training workshop was part of its 3 year, £750K contract with Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group, for Third Sector Development and Support. Continue reading →

Ernst & Young calling the shots over Right Care Right Place Right Time scheme

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The clinical model for the proposed Right Care Right Place Right Time scheme, that NHS commissioners and the Calderdale and Huddersfield hospitals have finally agreed after arguing about for two years, could be thrown up in the air yet again by a cost-cutting 5 year hospitals financial plan that is being drawn up by Ernst and Young (EY), at a cost of £0.5m to the deficit-ridden hospitals Trust.

Screen shot 2015-11-16 at 10.58.27Our hospitals may be broke, but the global management consultancy company EY had a global income of $US28.7bn in the financial year ending 30 June 2015. This is its fastest growth since 2008, an 11.6% increase over 2014. Obviously clearing up the mess from the 2008 bankers crash of the world economy is good business for EY and its ilk. Continue reading →

Huddersfield GP support services office to close by May 2016 as result of privatisation

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West Yorkshire Primary Care Support Service centres in Huddersfield, York (2 of them) and Doncaster are due to be closed next year when they’re privatised. This information has only become public through a document leaked to the press.

In a contract worth around £400m for up to ten years, the privatisation quango NHS England is handing corporate giant Capita the Primary Care Support Service (PCSS), that is based in 29 centres across England.

As it takes over the PCSS, Capita plans to close all but 3 PCSS centres and fire nearly 90% of PCSS staff.

The PCSS at Blue Beck House in York is due to close by end March 2016, and the PCSS at Broad Lea House in Huddersfield and the 2 PCSS centres in York and Doncaster are due to close by the end of May 2016. Continue reading →