Circle was not the problem at Hinchingbrooke hospital The problem was with the commissioning. Public services cannot afford to ignore the power of business to deliver results, so post-Circle they must work to produce better contracts. The recent intense debate over public sector outsourcing has been fuelled by people’s passion for public services. We’d all agree with that. While it may be wrong to run a public service exactly like a business, it is also wrong to believe that public services can neither learn from nor utilise businesses and business techniques to make them better. No one I know is calling for all public services to be run like businesses, though many businesses would benefit from being run more like public services. If the only point of having diverse suppliers for public services is to make the public sector more commercial, then it would indeed fail, and that should be avoided. But that is not what is happening. The previous Labour government, of which I was a member, anticipated that the vast majority of NHS services should remain in-house and that is still the case. Public services exist to provide a service – and in discharging that responsibility we need smarter and better commissioning than hitherto. Of course, if a public service fails to deliver our needs, we can hold those responsible to account, and that should also include their outsourcing decisions. If a supplier, either within the public sector, or a ‘spin out’ firm from the public sector, a charity or PLC, doesn’t deliver on its contract there must be consequences. The most urgent priority will be to avoid the collapse of any public service. Contracts must therefore be excellent in order to achieve the best outcomes – and often they are not. theguardian/society/2015/jan/20/circle-failure-hinchingbrooke-hospital-poor-nhs-contract
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 10:32:31 +0000
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