Today the details were announced of the deal that took Hinchingbrook Hospital into private ownership by Circle. They have written off the hospital's debt of £39m and have agreed to improve services, and their stated ambition is to make it 'one of the best' district hospitals in the country. They have been given a 10 year contract and are expected to make £10m per year for the life of the contract and 44% will be kept by Circle and the other 54% will go to the Government. On the face of it, a nice little deal. Circle also claim that they will 're-invest profits' back into the service.
What is the alternative? We are in a the second dip of a deep recession. Government has decided that the way to deal with this is to cut expenditure, which they are doing. Already thousands of public sector workers have already lost their jobs, and more will in the future as further cuts that the Government has put into place bite. In this environment it would be easy to see that there would be some 'rationalisation of health care' i.e. hospital closures. Hinchingbrook was one of those hospitals that were in danger of being axed. If the hospital closes, everyone loses their jobs. Under this deal, there is a strong chance that some jobs will be saved, in some way.
What I do not understand is, what skills do the private managers have that the NHS managers do not? Why not 'poach' these staff and give them jobs in the NHS?
The big danger is - if this experiment is successful, expect to see it at a hospital near you!
In the original version of this post, I had said that the Hospital Trust was called Hinchcliffe, when in fact it should have been Hinchingbrook. I am happy to make this alteration, and apologise unreservedly to anyone for any offence or confusion caused.
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