NHS Support Federation - The year of cataclysm for the NHS December 2012 - 0 views
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The controversial Health and Social Care Act passed in March 2012 ended the English National Health Service in all but name by abolishing the 60-year duty on the government to provide comprehensive healthcare for all.
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Surgeries, wards, units and community services have been closed and clinical staff shed as the NHS desperately seeks to make “savings” of £20 billion.
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the private sector expects to win £20 billion of business from the NHS, according to the corporate finance adviser Catalyst
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a few gluttonous companies—Virgin Care, Serco, Care UK—have secured dominant positions in the market
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Local NHS bodies have already been instructed to outsource 39 types of service. Dubbed the “39 steps to privatisation,” this covers everything from autism care to wheelchair provision.
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Many Hospital Trusts are being pushed to the financial brink by the disastrous legacy of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI)
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In a first for the private sector, in February 2012 Circle took over an entire general hospital at Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire. The hospital has since fallen 19 places in the patient satisfaction rankings and its finances have worsened, forcing Circle to ask for a bailout after just six months. Despite being prepared to make a potential 20 percent cut to the hospital’s workforce, and while mostly owned by investment funds operating out of tax-havens like the Caymen Islands, Circle nevertheless vaunts its friendly-sounding business model under which doctors and nurses are given part-ownership of the company.
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another controversial aspect of the Health and Social Care Act—the ability for NHS hospitals to earn half their income from private patients
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revealed a tragic case where a consultant left half way through a dangerous birth to carry out a private caesarean section. The baby later died.
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All of this comes before the most high-profile part of the Health and Social Care Act has even been fully implemented—the replacement of PCTs with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)
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largely unaccountable new groups, who will in turn outsource the work to privatised “commissioning support units”