PCT to hive off NHS services to company

30 Jul 09
Hull’s NHS primary care trust has moved to transfer services and 1,200 staff to a community interest company - just a week after unions met health ministers to urge a rethink on privatisation
By Tash Shifrin

30 July 2009

Hull’s NHS primary care trust has moved to transfer services and 1,200 staff to a community interest company – just a week after unions met health ministers to urge a rethink on privatisation.

The move came as the East of England Strategic Health Authority confirmed that it was still unsure whether its controversial plan to hand management of Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust to a private sector or other NHS provider would make a profit or require a subsidy.

Talks between the unions and the full health ministerial team earlier this month were brokered by Unison general secretary Dave Prentis.

Speaking after the talks, Unison head of health Karen Jennings told Public Finance that Health Secretary Andy Burnham had ‘immediately said that actually the NHS is the preferred provider’ – although he had added that ‘contestability’ was the key to improving standards. Burnham also agreed to review Department of Health guidance that the unions believe favours private firms, she said.

But the talks appear not to have slowed the transfer of core services out of the health service. NHS Hull’s board decided to hand its community health services to the City Health Care Partnership – set up as a community interest company – on July 28.

Hull is one of 26 ‘pathfinders’ identified by the Department of Health to pioneer the new-style delivery organisation. The CHCP has been created out of the PCT and will be headed by its current director of nursing.

But regional Unison official Ray Gray said the NHS was ‘not the board’s to give away to a private company’. He added: ‘It’s costing a fortune to set up another board and go through this process. That’s money that could be used on frontline services.’

If other PCTs followed Hull’s route, there was the ‘possibility of 40% of the NHS being in private hands’, he said.

NHS Hull chair Kath Lavery said the move was ‘not about privatising the NHS’. The new company would ‘work to business principles’ but would have to reinvest any surpluses in health services or the wider community.

Meanwhile, the East of England SHA has secured DoH approval to ‘franchise’ the management of the Hinchingbrooke trust, which has a historic £40m debt.

SHA director of strategic projects Andrew MacPherson told PF there had been ‘no change’ since it decided to try the franchising model in October last year. Then, strategy director Stephen Dunn said the competitive bidding process would be used to ‘find out whether they pay us or we pay them’.
MacPherson said a subsidy to the provider could still ‘conceivably’ be needed.

‘We do see bidder dialogue helping form the shape of the deal.’

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