When Hinchingbrooke Hospital – £40m in the red, and providing woeful patient care – was handed over to the private sector to try to rescue in 2012, a posturing Labour Party warned of ‘worrying implications for the future of our NHS’. Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, accused the Tories of a ‘huge gamble’. Only last week, Ed Miliband claimed the NHS was ‘going backwards’ because of private sector involvement. The reality today, could not be more different. Under healthcare provider Circle – which gives doctors and nurses a voice in how the hospital is run, and operates a John Lewis-style incentive scheme for staff – Hinchingbrooke should break even this year and run a small surplus next. This has been achieved by slashing bureaucracy and middle managers and cutting money spent on locums. Most crucially, the Cambridgeshire hospital has just won a major award for patient care, based on key categories such as readmission and mortality rates and treatment of those with cancer. Under Labour, the innovation that has achieved these remarkable improvements would be blocked on ideological grounds, to the loud cheers of health unions who insist everything should be run by a monolithic, inefficient State machine. PRIVATISE THE NHS circlepartnership.co.uk/
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 09:21:46 +0000
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