Keep Our NHS Public News Update 2 October 2012

BBC News Serco takes over NHS Suffolk Community Healthcare services. NHS community services in Suffolk, including nursing and community hospitals, have transferred to a multi-national private company. Serco will run Suffolk Community Healthcare for three years. The 140m contract from NHS Suffolk also includes speech and language therapy and specialist dental services. Serco already runs Braintree Community Hospital in Essex and out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall. Its new contract includes running the community hospitals in Aldeburgh, Felixstowe and Newmarket. Tim Roberts, from the union Unison, which represents some NHS workers, said it was a "worrying day". "NHS Suffolk has stipulated the services which [Serco] have to continue to deliver and a minimum number of staff which are needed, but we cannot understand how they can deliver that contract for the money they're saving." Read more ... Guardian Was the BBC's coverage of the NHS bill biased and distorted? Was the BBC as impartial in its coverage of the NHS bill as it claims? Last Friday Open Democracy's OurBeeb project published a report that I produced. This is what it found in relation to the BBC's online content. One of the most controversial questions surrounding the Health and Social Care Act was whether it had a democratic mandate. After campaign promises of no more "top-down reorganisations", the Conservatives forced through a reorganisation so large it was, as the NHS chief executive David Nicholson put it, "visible from space". Yet two fleeting and obscure quotes aside, I could find no evidence of the BBC raising the issue of the bill's democratic legitimacy in almost two years. Another critical focus of the bill's opponents was the role of the private sector. Our report lists a number of major stories on this theme that were never reported at all by the BBC. For instance, the Mail on Sunday ran a major story showing how some executives of Monitor, the NHS regulator, were given lavish hospitality by their old employer McKinsey. The BBC devoted just 120 words to the story more than half of which was a government rebuttal only the hospitality element was mentioned. McKinsey's role in writing sections of the bill, the fact Monitor executives were ex-McKinsey employees and the firm's commercial ties with those who would profit were ignored. A similar approach was found to healthcare links to Westminster, in particular donations to the Conservative party and the financial interests of many peers. Section 5, The March Blackout, looks at the Beeb's reporting in March 2012, the climax of the bill's passing. Many have noted what appeared to be a news blackout. On 19 March, the day the bill finally passed the Lords, there was not a single article on the issue from the Beeb. With the bill safely passed, however, a stream of seven articles appeared the next day. On radio, the BBC has acknowledged the bill was discussed only once on the flagship Today programme in March, prior to the bill's passing. On lobbyists, the BBC frequently used sources without making clear their links to healthcare firms. For instance, Nick Seddon of "thinktank Reform" was often involved in the Beeb's radio and online discussions, he also appeared on the Beeb's recent "NHS day". It was not mentioned that many of Reform's financial backers are firms who stand to make substantial profits from the bill, including KPMG and Serco. Nor was it mentioned that Seddon's former job was head of communications at Circle, the first private company to take over an NHS hospital. As Liberal Conspiracy reported, "two of Circle's major shareholders are Tory Party donors". None of the above was ever disclosed by the Beeb, which continued portraying Reform and Seddon as disinterested experts. The true nature of the bill was not adequately described by the Beeb. It insisted, almost robotically, in describing it as a "bill to give power to GPs". Indeed, the banner scrolling on the screen when the bill passed read "Bill which gives power to GPs passes". This was government spin consistently reported as fact. In reality GPs overwhelmingly

rejected the bill. I spoke to Professor Colin Leys, author of The Plot Against the NHS, who said: "The BBC routinely described the bill as a reform to empower GPs the government's description rather than as turning the NHS into a market driven by shareholder interests, which was what the critics maintained accurately, as is now becoming clear. The BBC's public service remit should surely have required it at least to present the bill's purpose as contested." For whatever reasons, there is significant evidence supporting the notion that the BBC reported the NHS bill in a biased and distorted fashion. It should be noted that my report has an important limitation: it was primarily but not exclusively focused on online content news and analysis because without transcripts or access to the Beeb's entire output on the subject, there simply weren't the resources to analyse that content. It may be that radio and TV output was significantly different, but I believe this unlikely, for reasons stated in the report. If the above criticisms are found to have merit either in full or in part, however, then the BBC has some serious questions to answer. It is not in the government that the strength of the BBC lies a parliamentary system captured by forces inherently opposed to its existence but in the British public, the support of which it should rigorously protect. Read more ... Financial Times Block on patient cherry picking dropped. Ministers have dropped plans to prevent private hospitals profiteering through cherry picking NHS patients by paying providers a reduced rate. The move has prompted concerns the government is backtracking from reassurances over private sector involvement in the NHS made over the course of its controversial health bill, finally passed in the spring after more than a year of political wrangling. The policy against cherry picking was announced last November as an explicit response to concerns over expanding private sector involvement. Around half of all NHS-funded hospital care about 40bn a year is paid for through a national tariff, where hospitals are paid a set rate for each patient, depending on the treatment given. As private hospitals generally do not treat complex or emergency patients, critics claim private contractors can profit by cherry picking easier patients.To appease these concerns, the Department of Health in November announced that hospitals whose costs were lower due to treating easier or less complex patients would be paid a reduced rate. The policy was widely assumed to be directed at private providers. But in the annex to a letter sent to NHS chiefs last month, David Flory, the deputy NHS chief executive, revealed the policy would be dropped from April. But a spokesman for the health department insisted the government had not lessened its resolve to clamp down on profiteering. We are committed to preventing cherry picking of patients but there is more than one way to tackle this, he said. Read more ... Community Care
Burstow: Ministers must initiate closure of Winterbourne-style units.

The government must initiate the closure of Winterbourne View-style learning disability hospitals by instructing the NHS to start decommissioning them, Paul Burstow has said. The call, which goes beyond the government's current position, came in an interview with Community Care three weeks after Burstow lost his job as care services minister after more than two years in post. Burstow also called on ministers to commission a thorough probe into the level of funding going into social care to ensure the sector is not short-changed in the next government spending review, expected next year. Burstow said the final report of the Department of Health's review into the abuse at Winterbourne View, due this autumn, should tell NHS commissioners to start decommissioning assessment and treatment units for people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviours, such as Winterbourne. The DH's interim report into Winterbourne, published under Burstow's watch in June, said the client group should receive personalised, community-based services, and not be placed long-term in assessment and treatment units. However, sector leaders warned that the government's goals would not be achieved without it instructing the NHS to change commissioning practice - a position Burstow has now reached. Read more ...

News Post Leader

MP urges trusts to say no to lower pay.

Blyth Valley MP Ronnie Campbell is calling on the north easts regional National Health Service trusts to reject government plans to impose regional pay levels. The call follows a decision by northern nurses to rule out joining a pay cartel set up in the south west of the region. Mr Campbell fears that under the governments plans, trusts would have to compete against each other for staff. That would increase health inequalities between different parts of the country and be bad for staff morale, he said. The move has also been welcomed by the Royal College of Nursings regional bosses. The college is also appealing to the north easts remaining trusts to give the regional pay cartel a wide berth. Read more ... OnMedica Focus on patient choice is wrong, say doctors. The BMA has called for the government to change its focus on increasing patient choice to a greater drive for integrating care pathways across different parts of the health service. Timed to coincide with the formal launch of the NHS Commissioning Board the body that will oversee Englands clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) the BMA published comments warning that the focus of the NHS Commissioning Board on choice was misplaced. Patient choice had become confused with an ambition for shared decision making with patients and was at the expense of integration, said the BMA. In its written response to the governments Developing Our NHS Care Objectives: A Consultation on the Draft Mandate to the NHSCB, the BMA said the proposals do not provide a clear vision for the NHS. The response says: We believe that integrating care pathways to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare should be the focus of improvements through commissioning, rather than focusing on choice of provider and competition among healthcare providers. Concerns were also raised by National Voices, a coalition of more than 140 health and social care charities, which in its response, said it could not support proposals to increase choice until patients had true involvement in care planning, treatment options and management of long-term conditions. National Voices director of policy Don Redding said: Choice is valuable but, at this point, there is a real risk that the objective on extending choice will occupy commissioner and provider attention to the detriment of patient involvement. The draft mandate does not provide clarity about what patient involvement means, nor its central importance in meeting the challenges facing the NHS and social care. From the start of October, the NHS Commissioning Board (NHSCB) is now officially an executive non-departmental public body, but has existed in shadow form since last year. From April of next year, it will assume its full statutory responsibilities, which include authorising 212 proposed CCGs, improving health outcomes, and overseeing how 85 billion of NHS funds is spent. Read more ...