Private firms to take over failing NHS hospitals under radical new plans

13 April 2012

Private companies would take over failing NHS hospitals under radical plans to be unveiled today.

Private-sector managers would be drafted in to replace under-performing NHS bosses, who would be sacked without a pay-off.

The reforms will be the first in a wave of public-sector changes being prepared by Gordon Brown.

They follow the outcry last year when the head of a hospital where 90 patients died in a superbug outbreak left with a £250,000 severance package.

New plans: Failing NHS hospitals could soon be run by private companies

New plans: Failing NHS hospitals could soon be run by private companies

However, the unions are likely to be outraged by the plans, which will be announced by Alan Johnson.

They will accuse the Health Secretary of helping to further what they claim is the privatisation of the Health Service.

The regulations will give the NHS powers to intervene more quickly where hospitals are failing.

Specifically, ministers will be able to order the removal of NHS trust chief executives or chairmen without having to pay them a generous severance package.

An entirely new team from a single private company could then take over the management of struggling hospitals and primary care trusts.

Around 20 NHS trusts which are falling short of minimum standards on quality, safety or finances are set to be identified as candidates for a takeover.

The first  -  Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire  -  is already understood to be searching for new management, which could come from the private sector.

Under the scheme, to be set out in detail by Health Minister Ben Bradshaw, new executives for failing hospitals could be drawn from private companies such as Bupa or from top-grade trusts elsewhere in the NHS.

Controversial plan: Health Secretary Alan Johnson is set to announce that private firms may run NHS hospitals

Controversial plan: Health Secretary Alan Johnson is set to announce that private firms may run NHS hospitals

Mr Bradshaw said last night: 'What we've never done before is to allow the private sector to take over the running of a whole hospital in the form of a franchise, which is one of the options that would be included in this performance regime.'

When the scandal at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust was exposed last year, Mr Johnson tried to block the £250,000 pay-off offered to chief executive Rose Gibb, whose salary was £150,000 a year.

She had quit after the scale of the outbreak, which was linked to 270 deaths at the trust's three hospitals, was revealed.

Shocked by the appalling hygiene lapses blamed for the epidemic, he ordered the severance package reduced to £75,000 but Miss Gibb, 47, subsequently sued for the full amount.

Under the latest reforms, the Government will set minimum standards of quality, safety and financial management, removed by the NHS without financial compensation and replaced by a new team.

The prospect of personnel from outside the NHS coming in to run hospitals will act as a red flag to health sector unions, who will see it as further evidence of creeping privatisation of the service.

The British Medical Association voiced 'grave concern' about the scheme, which it warned amounted to the effective privatisation of parts of the NHS and could lead to the fragmentation of the service.

But a Government source said: 'We can only proceed with the next stage of public sector reform if we have tackled the failing hospitals and eliminated unfair variations in local services.

'But we can only do that if we have a stringent set of minimum standards and enforce them, and that could not happen if we went down the Tory route of abandoning targets for waiting times and hospital infections, and simply allowed every hospital to fend for itself.'

The independent Helathcare Commission has warned that one in four trusts is failing to tackle dirty wards and deadly infections and the situation is 'deteriorating'.

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