By Tash Shifrin
15 January 2010
Five private companies are in the running to take over a debt-ridden Cambridgeshire hospital, with just one rival shortlisted from within the health service.
Andrew MacPherson, director of strategic projects at East of England Strategic Health Authority, told Public Finance that the scale of the challenges facing the health service amid tightening public finances had made other potential NHS bidders think again.
The move to hand over the running of Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust, which has a £38m historic debt on an £80m budget, would be the first use of the government’s controversial franchise policy since its relaunch in 2008.
Private sector franchising has been used only once, in 2003, when consultancy Tribal won a contract to manage Birmingham’s Good Hope Hospital. The contract was terminated early after promised quality improvements failed to materialise.
The Hinchingbrooke franchise has been opened to expressions of interest from within the NHS, along with private firms. But just one – Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – has been shortlisted.
The SHA had received ‘a few’ expressions of interest from NHS trusts, MacPherson said.
But he added: ‘We had a lot of interest, but as [NHS] plans for 2010 emerged, there was some strategic reflection at NHS boards, that although they’d like to be at the party, there were other priorities.’
The private firms that will join the foundation trust in a first round of competitive dialogue are Care UK (Partnership Health Group), Circle Health, Interhealth Canada (UK), Ramsay Health Care UK and Serco Health.
MacPherson told PF that the groundbreaking move should cut back Hinchingbrooke’s ‘unsustainable’ debt. ‘We would hope innovation would address the debt… reducing it in some form.’
But he confirmed that the NHS could still subsidise the contract. If a bidder ‘required some sort of seed funding or support from EoE, we would obviously consider that in the round’, he said.
David Worskett, director of the NHS Partners Network, which represents private and voluntary sector providers, praised the ‘open competition process’ adopted for the Hinchingbrooke franchise.
The NHS Competition and Co-operation Panel is to rule on a challenge by the network against the exclusion of non-NHS bodies from a tendering process launched by Great Yarmouth and Waveney Primary Care Trust last year. The PCT – which is also in the East of England area – argues that its move was in line with the government’s declaration that the NHS is its ‘preferred provider’.
The panel is expected to rule in the summer.
15 January 2010
Five private companies are in the running to take over a debt-ridden Cambridgeshire hospital, with just one rival shortlisted from within the health service.
Andrew MacPherson, director of strategic projects at East of England Strategic Health Authority, told Public Finance that the scale of the challenges facing the health service amid tightening public finances had made other potential NHS bidders think again.
The move to hand over the running of Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust, which has a £38m historic debt on an £80m budget, would be the first use of the government’s controversial franchise policy since its relaunch in 2008.
Private sector franchising has been used only once, in 2003, when consultancy Tribal won a contract to manage Birmingham’s Good Hope Hospital. The contract was terminated early after promised quality improvements failed to materialise.
The Hinchingbrooke franchise has been opened to expressions of interest from within the NHS, along with private firms. But just one – Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – has been shortlisted.
The SHA had received ‘a few’ expressions of interest from NHS trusts, MacPherson said.
But he added: ‘We had a lot of interest, but as [NHS] plans for 2010 emerged, there was some strategic reflection at NHS boards, that although they’d like to be at the party, there were other priorities.’
The private firms that will join the foundation trust in a first round of competitive dialogue are Care UK (Partnership Health Group), Circle Health, Interhealth Canada (UK), Ramsay Health Care UK and Serco Health.
MacPherson told PF that the groundbreaking move should cut back Hinchingbrooke’s ‘unsustainable’ debt. ‘We would hope innovation would address the debt… reducing it in some form.’
But he confirmed that the NHS could still subsidise the contract. If a bidder ‘required some sort of seed funding or support from EoE, we would obviously consider that in the round’, he said.
David Worskett, director of the NHS Partners Network, which represents private and voluntary sector providers, praised the ‘open competition process’ adopted for the Hinchingbrooke franchise.
The NHS Competition and Co-operation Panel is to rule on a challenge by the network against the exclusion of non-NHS bodies from a tendering process launched by Great Yarmouth and Waveney Primary Care Trust last year. The PCT – which is also in the East of England area – argues that its move was in line with the government’s declaration that the NHS is its ‘preferred provider’.
The panel is expected to rule in the summer.
