INMYVIEW...THISCOST-CUTTINGISAWASTEOFMONEY

I AM shocked by the damage being done to patient care by outsourcing in the name of saving the NHS money.

Take the recent news that a GP practice taken over by private provider Virgin Care has been placed in special measures within two years of being rated as ‘outstanding’ and despite increased funding.

Meanwhile, the National Audit Office has published a damning review on the outsourcing of support services to the private firm Capita, which left two-thirds of GP practices receiving incorrect medical records when patients had moved and meant that 1,000 GPs, dentists and opticians were unable to work because of delays (resulting in lost jobs and earnings, as well as putting patients at risk).

These cost-cutting moves by NHS England are not privatisation of healthcare — there is a world of difference between doctors choosing to work privately, still bound by professional ethics and regulated by the rules of the General Medical Council, and commercial companies being involved in management and administration where there are no such controls in place and where the first duty of the company is to make profits for its shareholders.

Equally concerning are the vast resources spent on management consultants by NHS managers who commission firms such as Deloitte to do work for which the NHS managers themselves are already highly paid. Do we see any benefit for patients from this expenditure — or, in other words, is it evidence-based, as medical practice and treatment have to be?

All the recent talk about a dedicated NHS tax to guarantee the health service the funds it needs obscures the shameful waste of our money on cost-cutting experts.

And it’s difficult to see just how patients benefit — which, after all, is actually the point of it all.