Eight out of ten doctors are concerned about private companies profiting from the NHS, a poll shows.
Doctors were asked whether they agreed with the BMA’s concerns that large multinational companies are making profits out of running local clinical services on behalf of the NHS.
Eighty percent of the 697 respondents said they either strongly agreed (51%) or agreed (29%) with the statement. Just 7% either disagreed (4%) or strongly disagreed (3%).
One respondent, a consultant urologist, said: “The NHS no longer exists. There are a number of health services in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, all different, no longer national in a UK sense. We are at a time when foundation trusts have become businesses, motivated by profit and loss.”
A BMA report, listing the amounts of public money being wasted as a result of market-driven reforms, estimates that £1.54bn might have been overpaid to Independent Sector Treatment Centres in England. It suggests the NHS in England spent around £350m on management consultants in the last financial year.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of BMA council, said: “This is more evidence of the medical profession’s concerns about commercial values being imposed on the NHS. There are countless examples of taxpayers’ money being wasted because of the drive for services to be provided by profit-making companies rather than traditional NHS providers.
“When politicians talk about cutting waste they should consider the fact that the bureaucratic costs of a market are hitting the taxpayer hard. We’d like to see the NHS in England restored to a publicly provided, publicly funded service, driven by the needs of patients, not shareholders.”
Read more on the BMA’s campaign.
Tags: ISTCs, Management consultants, Privatisation
Whitehall, across all departments, has never been any good at knowing how much who was paying to whom and for what! They preach ‘cost-effectiveness’, ‘cost-efficiency’ and ‘value for money’ but appear to have no understanding of the word ‘waste’! Their bureaucratic ’systems’ are supposed to ‘protect the public purse’ but seem to result in certain companies (or people) lining their pockets at our expense. It would appear that their ‘audits’ are no more effective than those in Brussels! Retired Orthopod