Company running Britain's only privatised NHS hospital wants out

Turns out running a public hospital is actually quite tricky and not an easy way to earn a few bob after all. Who knew?

You beat me to it. Basically there's not enough profit in running the NHS. The company found you need more money to run services properly. Remember, this is a private company managing an NHS hospital that's said there's not enough funding. The same applies across the NHS but this gets ignored.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015 ... e-hospital

WTF?

I read that article. It's a poorly written one IMO (I had to read it twice, though being tired may have had something to do with it.

Basically, it confuses "CCGs" and "GPs". CCG = clinical commisioning group. Made up of doctors, clinical and non clinical staff, and laypersons. Pretty much all the doctors on there are GPs. No more than 50% of the group can be doctors. So you could have a CCG which is 30% doctors and say 70% laypersons. Even if the doctors agreed on something, they'd still be outvoted by the laypersons. But the doctors on the CCG get blamed by the media. Furthermore, all GP surgeries must be signed up to the CCG or they cannot provide GP services.

Secondly, this is about the provider-purchaser split that Lansley introduced into the NHS. It basically means that the CCG buys care from the provider, in this case the hospital. The hospital gets paid more for certain types of care and less for others. An example is outpatient referrals. If I, as a GP, refer say a heart patient to the cardiology unit because I'm worried about their angina, the hospital will do something (eg investigations, change medication etc) and they will get paid for doing so. If that patient has to be followed up in say three months, the hospital will get paid less since it's not a new referral. That's right - new referrals pay more than follow ups. So what do hospitals do to maximise income? Discharge patients after one review.

Let's say Mr Bloggs has angina. I've fiddled with his meds and I can't optimise it any further. I can refer him to cardiology, who will look at his meds and make some changes. Under the old system, Mr Bloggs would be seen as often as necessary to perfect his medication (eg it takes three appointments) and eventually at some point he would be discharged from follow up. Under the new system, Mr Bloggs gets seen as an outpatient, the consultant will write a letter to the GP saying "try combo 1 and if that doesn't work, try combo2 and maybe combo 3. Mr Bloggs has been discharged from the hospital. Please refer back if he continues to have symptoms". The hospital have done this so that if combo 1, 2 and 3 don't work, they'll get a "new" referral to the clinic and hence more money. In the end, it's the patient who suffers.

Re-read the article, replacing GPs with CCG and see what you think.

Jesus fcuk, it's like a company wanting new customers while it treats it's existing ones like crap. You get a good deal at the start, then you have to threaten to report them to a higher authority and hope for the best.