Department of Health spends £1.2bn bailing out NHS providers. Why?

Last Updated: September 3, 2015By


Would anybody like a stab at explaining what’s going on here? Is this the result of over-reliance on PFI, coupled with over-eagerness to make private NHS providers profitable?

More than 50 NHS institutions were paid a total of £1.2bn in bailouts in the last year, about double the amount spent to prop up providers a year earlier, an investigation has found.

The Department of Health paid out in cash and loans to cover wages, debts, replacements for ageing equipment and deficit reduction in 2014-2015, according to the Health Service Journal.

More than 50 struggling NHS providers, including about a third of the acute sector, needed bailing out, in what the trade magazine called a stark illustration of how rapidly hospital finances were deteriorating.

A dozen NHS trusts received support worth more than 10% of their annual income, with three getting more than £50m each. Barts Health NHS Trust in east London, which is in special measures, received more than £100m.

Source: Department of Health spends £1.2bn bailing out NHS providers | Politics | The Guardian

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7 Comments

  1. stephen brophy September 4, 2015 at 5:45 am - Reply

    Privatisation has never worked! You paid more and get less/poor service, the government knows this! It’s just it’s ideological system to put money to its backers plus lots of mps have shares in these health care companies! We are being conned!

  2. marcusdemowbray September 4, 2015 at 6:10 am - Reply

    Could this be a foretaste of what things will be like if the Tories manage to fully privatise NHS (and BBC) ? Look at our railways, many train companies now owned by foreign States and or Companies and using profits from their UK ops to improve services back home, PLUS chowing down HIGHER amounts of our government’s subsidy hand outs than BR ever did. You cannot make it up!

  3. amnesiaclinic September 4, 2015 at 9:39 am - Reply

    Good question. Death of the NHS by strangulation under weight of the debt of PFI and Osborne’s PF2. Also outrageous agency fees and management consultants.

    Who benefits??

  4. mohandeer September 4, 2015 at 11:08 am - Reply

    Well since Cameron promised the nation £8 billion in spending on the NHS and they have already taken our deficit up by £60 billion since May 2015, presumably the government will reimburse our NHS for the funds spent needlessly, just as they promised, in the run up to the election.

  5. mrmarcpc September 4, 2015 at 3:49 pm - Reply

    Under Hunt and the tories, the NHS will be dead!

  6. mili68 September 4, 2015 at 9:54 pm - Reply

    Tweeted @melissacade68

  7. Daniel Margrain September 6, 2015 at 10:36 pm - Reply

    On March 20, 2012, MPs passed the Health and Social Care Bill (commonly called ‘the NHS bill’) more than 14 months after it was first put before Parliament. Virtually every major professional medical body had fought against it, and there were numerous public protests. But the opposition was given scant media coverage and the government was able to force the bill through.

    Recall that the Conservatives, led by David Cameron, won just 36% of the vote in the 2010 general election. Outrageously, the Conservative manifesto said nothing about the NHS bill. The former Conservative minister and leading political pundit Michael Portillo explained the reasoning:

    “They did not believe they could win an election if they told you what they were going to do because people are so wedded to the NHS.”

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