Forty years of failure – Private sector contracting and its impact on the NHS, by Dr John Lister, offers a scathing critique of the NHS’s privatisation experiments. Each chapter peels back … Read more
Outsourcing
Subsidiary companies (Sub Co), spun off from the NHS, are back in favour as part of the effort to save money in the NHS. Sir Jim MacKey, NHS England’s transition CEO, … Read more
The scale of the government’s structural overhaul of the NHS is proving to be far greater than initially thought, with up to 30,000 jobs now at risk. With internal battles to … Read more
EMED, a private patient transport company taking over contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds, is reported to be grappling with concerns about service performance and risk to patients. EMED … Read more
Electing a Labour government with its close links to the trade unions raises many expectations. The King’s Speech commitment to legislate policy around workers’ rights includes tackling decades of outsourcing, with … Read more
New regulations will reduce some forms of outsourcing in the NHS, but there are significant gaps which a UNISON campaign is aiming to fix. A reduction in the competitive tendering … Read more
The president of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists has sparked a row with independent sector bosses after warning ophthalmology risks becoming largely privatised unless NHS England radically changes the specialty’s … Read more
The Guardian has revealed that the NHS is to hand a key role in handling patient data and share of a £480m contract to the US spy technology firm Palantir. … Read more
In the face of rising waiting lists government policy has aimed to increase the role of the independent sector in tackling these record delays, but as a Lowdown analysis of … Read more
Sky News has reported on a report in The Times that patients will soon be able to use the NHS app to opt for private hospital treatment in an effort … Read more
NHS England has awarded a contract to St John Ambulance for additional ambulance service capacity nationally to help cope with high demand and handover delays, with the capacity available from … Read more
Privatisation of the NHS has been found to correspond to a decline in care quality and “significantly” increased deaths from treatable causes, according to a study from researchers at the … Read more
Optum, a subsidiary of the US corporation United Health, is to acquire Leeds-based EMIS Group, one of the UK’s largest handlers of NHS data. The deal values EMIS at approximately … Read more
The private cancer diagnostic and treatment company Rutherford Health has been placed into liquidation. Only eight months ago the opening of a new community diagnostics hub (CDH) within a partnership between … Read more
The police have raided the London home of Tory peer Michelle Mone as part of a police fraud probe into multi-million pound PPE deals relating to a company she has been linked … Read more
Seven companies – Bramble Hub, Deloitte, EY, KPMG, McKinsey & Co, Newton Europe and PwC – are being paid up to £42m for an initial two-month data contract, amid growing concern over the increasing … Read more
The NHS England ‘Delivery Plan’ to tackle the growing backlog of waiting list treatment, announced on February 8, is not a plan at all. It lacks sufficient investment and – … Read more
While the NHS has to badger and campaign to secure even a £20bn down payment on the costs of reconstruction after more than a decade of decline and falling real … Read more
The evidence of a massive increase in people in need of help from mental health services in the UK is now incontrovertible. NHS England reports 1.4 million people on the … Read more
Over the Christmas-New Year break more scientists joined a growing outcry against the government plan to sell off the Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre UK (VMIC), which was first revealed by the Financial Times at the … Read more
