Though Cowards Flinch

Words can’t describe how horrified I was when I picked up on this story through the BBC last night.

Hinchingbrooke District Hospital in Cambridgeshire is struggling with its budget, having to take a £40m loan from the NHS to stay in the black. The hospital is now being eyed up by 5 different Private firms, that want to take total control over the management on a for-profit basis. Interest arose in the hospital after the strategic health authority put the management responsibilities out for open tender due to the financial issues at the trust. If the deal goes through it will become the first NHS hospital in Britain to be operated by a private company!

In my opinion, private companies have no place in the NHS, profit should not factor into the health service full stop! The primary, and indeed, only objective of a hospital should be to provide high quality healthcare to its patients, not make profits for private investors. These companies don’t want to run a hospital due to some altruistic feeling of duty towards the community, they want to do what all private companies do, make money. As a spokesperson for one of the firms involved said, “this is a very attractive business opportunity.”

There is no doubt that the trust have made some serious errors with their financial management, but what they need is some expert assistance to get past this, not to let the private sector loose on it!

Despite some troubles with the finances, the trusts Chief Executive Mark Millar, has been praised in the local press. A survey by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement rated the trust second in the country for reducing waiting times and received praise for improving a number of other standards of care.

It’s clear that the problems within Hinchingbrooke are solely financial and nothing to do with the quality of care it provides. Now I’m not saying that this isn’t a problem, it clearly is, but this is a problem that the Strategic Health Authority and the Department of Health should be dealing with in conjunction with the hospital staff, not the market.

Allowing private control in this hospital would set a worrying precedent. How long before media-ridiculed hospitals are being lined up for private takeover? As a spokesperson for Unison said yesterday, “this is a dangerous experiment”.

If the Tories win the election, on the back of Labour’s perceived corruption, how are we to regard Conservative Health spokesman Andrew Lansley? Lansley has received £21,000 in donations from the wife of the Chairman of Care UK, one of the firms bidding for control of the hospital. But of course his decisions will be entirely impartial. Gordon Brown himself received £5,000 from the chair of BUPA, and the links between both parties and private healthcare stretch beyond this.

At the moment we have a system of profit-making Independent Sector Treatment Centres, to which the NHS contracts out operations and which are anything but value for money. American private health insurers are already looking for a cut of the pie; how long before they’re bankrolling a selection of politicians to get it for them?

Letting private companies run our hospitals is totally contrary to the principles of the NHS. I bet Nye Bevan must be spinning in his grave! Sadly this is just the next step in the policy of marketisation and private procurement within the NHS, which has flourished since ’97. Numerous organisations such as the LRC, the Socialist Party, Keep the NHS Public, several Unions and Compass, have all been warning against this course of action for some time, and it unfortunately seems that they all might be right.

The government needs to take action now! The Department of Health should step in to prevent private acquisition and help Hinchingbrooke solve its budget issues. The NHS is a public service, probably the most cherished public service. No matter how far privatisation has been allowed to creep into other aspects of our society we cannot allow it here. It is up to those of us who believe in a publicly funded, publicly operated NHS, to resist these attempts at privatisation. It is unclear so far what kind of opposition is being organised, but as soon as it is, we will cover it here.

Lets hope that no campaign is necessary, and that the Department of Health will resolve this issue swiftly and come to a reasonable solution. Unfortunately such intervention doesn’t seem to be forthcoming so I would advise anyone reading this to follow the situation closely. This is not just a problem for the people who rely on Hinchingbrooke, if this is allowed to continue, then one day soon, it could be coming to a hospital near you!