NHS privatisation: Are there ANY ‘qualified providers’?

zcoalitionfailNHS

Qualify v. To give eligibility.

It seems there are very few, if any ‘qualified providers’ from the private sector currently working in the English National Health Service, according to the latest issue of Private Eye (#1382, p38).

It states: “When the government decided to flog off large chunks of the NHS, it insisted that private providers must ‘qualify and register’ before being allowed to offer NHS-funded services.

“But the NHS regulator Monitor never carried out the promised ‘assurance process’ to test whether providers were suitable or not. It confirmed that it held no register of ‘any qualified providers’ and a spokesman even said it would ‘love to know where there is a list’.

“Monitor only licenses organisations that hold NHS contracts worth more than £10 million a year. This leaves the vast majority of smaller ‘alternative’ providers and non-profit businesses unchecked.

“NHS England doesn’t check them either. Not only does it not hold any list, but it has also stopped providing support to local clinical commissioning groups to enable them to check the credentials of companies that are bidding for contracts. It has closed its online ‘Any Qualified Provider Resource Centre’, along with the Supply2Health website which at least listed contracts and current providers.

“All that can be found after a determined trawl through the Care Quality Commission website is a cobbled-together list of 41 mainly small-care providers, many of which have not been inspected, leaving the issue of whether they are ‘qualified’ open to question.

“Responsibility for deciding who ‘qualifies’ to carry out NHS work falls therefore not on those who are supposed to scrutinise and regulate NHS services but on local health purchasers. As the Health and Social Care Act doesn’t define what ‘qualified’ means, health ministers have neatly opened up a postcode lottery in healthcare when certain companies may be accepted as qualified by some local commissioning groups, but not others.”

In fact, it’s worse even than that.

Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) were sold to the public on the premise that they would be composed of doctors – mainly GPs. But the CCGs’ own management teams are in fact steered by private sector consultants – McKinsey, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Capita, you know the names because they belong to all the usual suspects (see NHS SOS, Jacky Davis & Raymond Tallis (editors), pp24-25). Some of these organisations provide their own healthcare services, creating an opportunity for corruption that makes utter nonsense of the assurance ‘no decision about me, without me’ made by Andrew Lansley when he was pushing the Health and Social Care Act through Parliament.

So, if you live in England and you are told you need a health service that is only offered by a private provider – you demand to see proof that they are qualified to run the service. Who checked them? To what standard? Don’t be fobbed off with an assurance that the CCG has given them the thumbs-up – ask what organisation advised the CCG. Get to the bottom of the matter.

You might find that your ‘qualified provider’ doesn’t have any qualifications at all.

And then who’s liable if your treatment goes wrong?

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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5 Comments

  1. casalealex December 21, 2014 at 4:53 pm - Reply

    NHS privatisation: Are there ANY ‘qualified providers’? In a word” NO!

  2. Mr.Angry December 21, 2014 at 8:51 pm - Reply

    Don’t think it could get any worse but we are all being hood winked by a shower of corrupt crooks. I personally use the NHS on a regular basis, this is extremely worrying.

    Have first hand experience of the standard of “Health care examiners at ATOS who are a complete and utter joke, one listened to my chest by putting the stethoscope under my shirt collar as I was wearing tie and asked me to breath in and out. How in the name of God he could hear my chest with the scope on my neck, absolute joker.

    I placed thirteen types of medication on his desk and he asked what each was for, he did not have a clue.

    Mike is totally correct in saying “Who would be liable if your treatment goes wrong” and with legal aid virtually finished what chance would a patient stand of bringing a case against a private provider. None

  3. johnmangan47 December 22, 2014 at 12:18 pm - Reply

    You “qualify” by making a large donation to Tory Party funds.

    • Mike Sivier December 22, 2014 at 4:03 pm - Reply

      Thanks for clearing THAT up for us!

  4. casalealex December 23, 2014 at 8:36 am - Reply

    Thanks John, I needed your clarification. I was a little bit worried that my reply^^^ was a little over the top!

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