NHS hospitals don't belong to virgin care or Richard Branson. Not yet anyways.....
NHS hospitals, particularly foundation trusts are however, semi-autonomous companies, each with a company secretary with financial targets to meet. They are also allowed to undertake up to 50% of patients using their private insurance cover. *Watch this BLOG for more on this later.....
This means NHS patients could now be seen either as a burden, or a profit. Not convinced? look what happened at Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal where the race for hospital boards to become a part-private company led to years of patient neglect and hundreds of deaths.
Your NHS has already been part-privatised by stealth, the rest is coming soon....
The GP - led commissioning groups however did award some contracts for some urgent care treatment centres to virgin healthcare and are still awarding them. The fact that pre-2010 Lord Ari Darzi advised New Labour 'split' emergency triage into urgent and emergent is where the covert hospital primary care triage 'sell off' scheme started.
Urgent care alongside A&E is a Danish model of triage and only works well if BOTH are run by the same non-profit seeking organisation and BOTH are run on the same hospital site.
Think about it, urgent care is triage done by Drs who generally work out of private practice (some are wholly employed by virgin or other company such as GoToDoc).
So to ensure a profit, the politicians knew they had to split emergency care up into serious cases and not so serious - and that caused confusion for patients and doctors alike. When to attend, self-diagnoses, which hospital to attend etc..
Blair had similar to what is being proposed currently as Multi-specialty Community Provider (MCP) clinics, he called them independent [private] sector treatment centres . In 2006 Blair welcomed 11 private healthcare providers into the 'NHS ... the first wave of independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs).
The STPs/long term NHS plan pushed thru' by the Tories is merely an extension of Blair's (and Simon Stevens) 2006 white paper titled our health our care our say.
The separation of Urgent care 'away' from the A&E (eg about 12 miles as with Burnley hospital), was a test bed to see how the public reacted. This is why NHS campaigners have a problem, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the 2 political parties on outsourcing NHS services and the benefits. There are no benefits for the NHS, only the private frontdoor triaging firms.
But as soon as Tory MP Andrew Lansley's 2012 H&SC act came into effect, the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in England set up under the act began selling off contracts for hospital urgent care to private providers. So the money (via payment by results/Pbr) no longer circulated in the NHS but went to the private provider and some Hospital A&E's as a consequence began to downgrade or close.
Many hospitals were straddled with debt from Blair's Private finance initiatives (Pfi) where private companies (instead of government) were allowed to build the hospital for infrastructure, leading to huge increases in payback interest over the contract term. Hospital boards were falling over themselves to get new hospitals and equipment using Pfi, as for patients?
Some U.S health insurance firms are similar frontdoor providers, but their profit comes from tax relief schemes and referrals. This is why the American system has a 2-tier pathway, one for the poor with VERY basic access, and another for insurance payers.
The Conservatives, particular Boris Johnson, has openly stated they prefer the payer system. And that's what people have voted for in England, whether they were aware, or not...
If we are to use the results of the latest by-election at Hartlepool, the American system in 44 footprint areas of England could be in place very soon. All the more discretely done due to the ongoing pandemic.......
