Both patients and staff can resist the creeping corporate takeover
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Much has been made of the fact that the Department of Health has set aside £3bn to buy 1.7m operations from the private sector over the next five years; the emphasis has been on patient choice and extra capacity. But corporate representatives at the meeting were given a frank account of New Labour's plans to privatise NHS services.
A transfer market is now emerging in doctors, clinical services and even patients (healthier ones are worth more than sick ones). As in football, there will be a premier league of foundation trusts and independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) lording it over the rest. And as in football, commercial interests will prevail over all others.
Consider first the ISTCs, which will cream off £3bn of taxpayers' money. At present the Department of Health does not require the same level of training for doctors working in ISTCs as in NHS units. Six surgeons working for the private sector on NHS cases have already been suspended for what are termed serious surgical errors.
ISTCs create incentives to direct care to the comparatively well at the expense of the comparatively less well. There have been reductions in waiting times for cataract surgery, but there have been dramatic increases for chronic eye conditions such as glaucoma, diabetic eye disease and age-related macular degeneration. Easy, cheap operations such as cataract procedures are what the ISTCs want to focus on. If the easy cases and trained NHS staff get swallowed up by the private sector then the market will indeed get "wider", as more and more NHS providers get squeezed out by rising costs.
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Allyson Pollock is professor of public health policy at University College London and the author of NHS plc
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1490689,00.htmlAn excellent comment piece, even if the news it brings is bad.
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