Tag Archives: PricewaterhouseCoopers

So many revolving doors – was Bootham Park Hospital closed in the interests of patients or profits?

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Bootham Park Hospital was closed at the end of September 2015 on the sudden instruction of the Care Quality Commission, following their unannounced inspection five days before the contract for running the hospital was due to be taken up by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys mental health trust.

The inspection was apparently triggered by whistle-blowing from a ward manager who used to work for the Care Quality Commission.

Despite massive public opposition to the hurried closure – and an assurance to the Care Quality Commission from the head of Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys mental health trust that they had £2m earmarked for fixing the maintenance problems that were the reason for closing Bootham Park Hospital – the Care Quality Commission refused to budge.

None of this story makes any obvious sense. So what’s been going on?

Do fast-revolving doors between key public organisations and private health sector companies create a shadow NHS, where decisions are made in the interests of profit not patients? Continue reading →

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

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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 →