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The East of England Strategic Health Authority was formed on 1 July 2006.
Where possible reports will continue to be shown under:
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Strategic Health Authority
Essex Strategic Health Authority
Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire Strategic Health Authority
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Netcare shortlisted for NHS work. South African company has been named
preferred bidder on three five-year contracts to provide various diagnostic
services to thousands of patients across the UK. Netcare has been named
preferred bidder for the Cumbria &
Lancashire capture assess and treatment scheme. The contract entails the
delivery of 220,000 outpatient, diagnostic and minor surgical and non-surgical
treatments across seven locations. The contract is expected to commence during
the second quarter of 2007. It will perform MRI and CT scans and prepare
patients for surgery. The contract is one of 24 projects that form the NHS
Independent Sector Treatment Centres Programme. The combined value of the
deals is £2.5bn. Netcare has also been named preferred bidder for the
London Diagnostic Services and Eastern
Regions Diagnostic Services contracts in conjunction with InHealth Group. The
companies will provide a range of diagnostic radiology services, including
MRI, X-ray, ultrasound and endoscopy, from more than 96 locations across
London and the east of England. The contracts represent two out of seven
available as part of the NHS Diagnostics Programme. The project is worth a
combined £1bn over five years. Netcare continues to tender for additional
contracts. Netcare is Africa's largest private hospital and doctor network. In
May, it significantly bolstered its UK operations when it purchased a
controlling stake in General Healthcare Group, a provider of private acute
care in the UK. The combined company owns almost 120 hospitals across the UK,
with about 11,500 beds.
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public
of Independent
16 August 2006
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NHS plc: a dire diagnosis. Private Eye says: "No sooner had a
cross-party committee of MPs heavily criticised the government's use of
independent sector
treatment centres (ISTCs) than the Department of Health defiantly
announced that these private sector companies would be given £lbn worth of
contracts to run a series of "diagnostic centres". The identities of the lucky
firms show how commercial the business of healthcare has become. The
London and east England contract
goes to Amicus InHealth… owned by a consortium of South African private health
outfit Netcare, which botched a contract to provide cataract operations in
Oxfordshire; Apax, a private equity group set up by New Labour favourite
Sir Ronald Cohen; and Inhealth, a company chaired by serial private health
director Tim Chessells and owned by a mysterious Luxembourg fund called
Pegasus. Doubtless this bunch has nothing but the nation's health in mind as
it makes crucial diagnoses and won't be unduly inclined to push people to
independent treatment centres of the sort run by, er, Netcare. Meanwhile in
the South West the record of the (management)
consultants at Atos Origin in providing the over-priced and unpopular
choose-and-book system for hospital referrals was no bar to their success. Nor
in the South East were there too many concerns
about the conflicts of interest presented by handing the diagnosis deal to the
country's biggest private hospital operator, the taxdodging BUPA.
West Midlands patients will be able to
benefit from the services of Mercury Healthcare, the company that has already
been paid millions for work it hasn't done and whose "group strategy director"
is one Mark Smith, the former chief executive of
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS trust who resigned after the trust received zero
stars. From there he became head of health at PFI firm Amey working closely
with Ken Anderson... who now just happens to be doling out the diagnostic
centre contracts as "commercial director" of the NHS. Appropriately enough in
the North East the diagnostics contract has
gone to Alliance Medical, the company owned by yet another private equity
group, Bridgepoint - former employer of Geordie New Labour man and ex-Health
Secretary Alan Milburn. The company's previous forays into the health service
include a £95m contract to run MRI scans which were so poor they had to be
checked by the NHS anyway, leading the British Medical Association to describe
the firm's performance as "a complete disaster". So depending on where you
live, your next illness could well be diagnosed by an incompetent or a
profiteer - or more likely a combination of the two."
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public
of Private Eye 16 August 2006
- The first evidence of the scale of NHS reorganisation that ministers want
to push through across England came yesterday in health authority documents
suggesting the number of hospitals providing full emergency services may be
halved. In the Guardian yesterday, the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson,
unveiled plans to redesign the the NHS to improve care by concentrating key
services at fewer hospitals. He said there would be up to 60
"reconfigurations", including an overhaul of A&E, paediatrics and maternity
services. Board papers for the East of
England strategic health authority, meeting today in Fulbourne, near
Cambridge, suggest this may call into question the continuation of district
general hospitals providing all the key services, including A&E departments,
emergency medicine, waiting list surgery, maternity services and outpatient
consultations. Paul Watson, director of commissioning, said general purpose
hospitals serving populations of about 250,000 have existed for more than 40
years, but may no longer be sustainable.John Carvel, social affairs editor
Thursday September 14, 2006 The Guardian
- Health chiefs
say there is no 'hit list'. Health chiefs yesterday gave assurances that
they did not have a "hit list" of units across the region as they backed plans
for a major review of hospital services. Staff at some hospitals such as the
Queen Elizabeth Hospital at
King's Lynn feared that plans to reconfigure acute services could mean
greater centralisation and the loss of some departments such as accident and
emergency and neonatal intensive care services. But bosses at the
East of England Strategic Health Authority
say they are taking an open mind approach to the review to see whether the
current configuration of service is what is needed for the next three decades.
Staff representatives at QEH fear that the review is a "thinly-veiled" way of
making cuts. The SHA does, however, warn that there are financial
considerations involved, with many hospitals and trusts facing multi-million
pound deficits.
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public
of Eastern Daily Press 15 September 2006
- Union concerns
over health review. A health union has expressed concern over a radical
review of the NHS in the East which could see some hospitals downgraded or
even closed. The East of England Strategic
Health Authority is looking at a major shake-up of hospitals in the
region. Dr Paul Watson, director of commissioning for the SHA, told the BBC he
could not rule out the downgrading or even closure of any of the 19 hospitals
in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
One of the most vulnerable hospitals in any review is Hinchingbrooke Hospital
in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire. Geoff Reason, of Unison, said: "We are really
concerned because it possibly could result in a huge reduction in the level of
services in the east of England." Summary by
Keep our NHS Public
of BBC Online 19
September 2006
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Union anger over Blair's health comments. Union leaders in the region
reacted with anger last night at comments by Prime Minister Tony Blair that
there would be only "a few hundred" compulsory redundancies in the NHS this
year. Tory leader David Cameron claims the current financial crisis in the
health service is costing 20,000 jobs - a figure which managers' organisation
NHS Employers has said "may turn out to not be too far off the total reduction
in workforce numbers this year". The newly-appointed chief executive of the
NHS, David Nicholson, insisted that the true number of jobs lost would be
"significantly less" than that, but admitted that he did not know what the
final figure would be. And Blair said the vast majority of staffing reductions
would involve posts remaining unfilled or people being moved to new positions,
and only relatively few NHS workers would actually lose their jobs. Geoff
Reason, Unison's regional head of health, said: "We have a total of 2,800
notices of redundancies in the East of
England. We are facing increasing numbers of compulsory redundancies -
there are already over 100 compulsory redundancies in this part of the world.
It's an illusion to say 'compulsory' is the test. The test is how many
theatres have been closed, how many patient clinics have been restricted and
how many operations have been cancelled. The question is should we be making
qualified health workers redundant when we have a huge need for these people
?" Lib Dem health spokesman Steve Webb said: "The Prime Minister is totally
out of touch with reality. Around the country people are campaigning in their
thousands against threats to their local hospitals. Reported job losses are
just the tip of the iceberg. What kind of pressure will staff be under to take
voluntary redundancy or take on different jobs which they may not want ? With
the new NHS Chief Executive saying that up to 60 'reconfigurations' are yet to
come, more enormously disruptive job losses and service cuts can be expected." Summary by
Keep our NHS Public
of East Anglian Daily Times 19 October 2006
- NHS criticised over naming and shaming of endangered health trusts.
The government was criticised today for drawing up a hit list of 77 NHS trusts
at risk of closure, cuts in services and significant debt. The list, released
today by the Department of Health (DoH), also highlights which trusts are
likely to come under the most media scrutiny - prompting accusations from
doctors' leaders and opposition MPs that NHS reform is being driven by
political priorities rather than clinical need. The so-called "heat maps"
assessed whether individual NHS trusts would face national, regional or local
media attention and when this coverage was most likely to occur. It also
identified where NHS closures or cuts could affect Labour MPs. The list was
released by the DoH following a request by the Conservative party under the
Freedom of Information Act. Under the plans to reform the NHS, more patients
would be treated in the community rather than at their local hospital, and
specialist services would be taken away from local hospitals to create
regional centres of excellence. The impact was expected to be greatest on
acute and community hospitals. The list showed that NHS trusts in
London were most at risk, with eight of the 12 identified likely to
attract national media attention. he list also included 10 trusts from the
east of England, and nine each in the
north-west, south
central and south-east coast. David Batty
and agencies
Wednesday November 8, 2006 Guardian Unlimited
- Hospitals told
to delay operations to ease debt. Hospitals have been told not to operate
on patients until they have been on a waiting list for up to 20 weeks in the
latest attempt to deal with the financial crisis in the health service. The
instructions to delay treating people for as long as possible are spelled out
in leaked documents seen by The Daily Telegraph. In one letter, hospital
managers are told to work out how many operations can be put off until after
the new financial year, which starts in April. The documents, which were
leaked to the Conservatives, are the latest evidence of the impact that the
£1.3 billion deficit run up by front-line trusts in England is having on
patient care. The Tories said patients were having their treatment
artificially delayed because trusts were under orders from Patricia Hewitt,
the Health Secretary, to ensure that they break even. The instructions to
delay treatment for as long as possible are made in two separate letters sent
by health managers in the East of England, which has the worst performance in
the NHS. The first letter was sent by the
East of England's strategic health authority to the chief executives of
the region's primary care trusts, which run GP clinics and pay hospitals if a
patient needs treatment. The letter, written in November by Dr Paul Watson,
the strategic health authority's director of commissioning, underlined the
pressing need to get a grip on budgets. "The current end of year projections
for PCTs are simply unacceptable," he said, before going on to set out his
plans to ensure hospital operations were "restricted to the minimum required
to meet required access targets." There is a similar message in a separate
letter sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn by Hilary Daniels,
the chief executive of the
Norfolk primary care trust. In her letter, she said her PCT was having to
impose limits on the number of patients it could pay to be treated at the
hospital in the final few months of the financial year. Andrew Lansley, the
shadow health secretary, said: "There is no point in paying these NHS staff to
do nothing in the last quarter of the financial year solely because Patricia
Hewitt has put her own job on the line by promising to get the NHS back into
the black by April. Even the Department of Health must realise this is false
economy."
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public of Telegraph
2 January 2007
- Cash-strapped
SHA scraps emergency care network. NHS
East of England has scrapped a regional emergency care network, leading to
the loss of seven posts and sparking criticism from emergency care
specialists. The cash-strapped strategic health authority has recommended
primary care trusts withdraw funding for the Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge
emergency care network. The SHA also recommended PCTs stop funding a
computerised capacity and activity monitoring system that allows co-ordination
between hospital trusts and ambulances. Talks were under way this week between
acute and ambulance trusts to try to save the service. The Department of Heath
recommends all areas should have an emergency care network to oversee urgent
care transformation. The SHA forecasts an overspend of £175m this year.
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public of Health
Service Journal 1 March 2007
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Longer wait for NHS
patients. Patients will have to wait up to five months for surgery to save
NHS cash, a leaked letter has revealed. The current average waiting time is
eight weeks but hospitals are being told to treat fewer patients to avoid
overspending their budgets. A document from the
East of England Strategic Health Authority,
leaked to MP John Baron, tells how primary care trusts are told to ensure
surgery is "limited" to urgent patients or those who have waited 20 weeks. The
Billericay and district MP said it meant efficient hospitals, currently
hitting targets, would be penalised and forced to limit the numbers of
operations they carry out. He said: "South West
Essex PCT has been ordered to transfer £3.5m to the health authority so it
can be given to other trusts in the region with deficits. However, it is
struggling to find all the cash. Why should our PCT be made to make cutbacks
because other PCTs are in deficit ?"
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public of South
Essex News 16 March 2007
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PCTs delayed on audiology contract. An audiology contract has been
delayed indefinitely because the provider has not been able to sign off
quality and safety guarantees with the Department of Health. The DoH had
awarded Mercury Health preferred bidder status to provide diagnostics services
to NHS patients across the West Midlands, on
behalf of the region's 17 primary care trusts. However the delay in the
audiology contract has left PCTs fearful that they may miss next year's
18-week maximum wait target. A DoH spokesman said Mercury Health had not yet
shown that it could 'ensure patient safety and high-quality healthcare for NHS
patients'. The contract would only proceed when this had been guaranteed, he
said. The DoH's contract with Mercury Health to provide other types of
diagnostics services to patients in the West Midlands will start at the end of
May, two months after the government's original deadline. In February, HSJ
revealed that BUPA had pulled out of a contract with the DoH to provide
diagnostic services across the South East.
Amicus InHealth, a joint venture between Amicus Healthcare and InHealth Group,
has won preferred bidder status on two of the diagnostics contracts in
London and the East of England. Atos
Origin will provide diagnostic services to patients in the
South West, and Alliance Medical has won
preferred bidder status for the North East.
Summary by
Keep our NHS Public of Health
Service Journal 5 April 2007
- NHS cutbacks leave £500m unspent. The NHS has underspent by half a
billion pounds as a result of the aggressive cuts imposed by the health
secretary, Patricia Hewitt, a Guardian analysis of health authority figures
has revealed. The size of the underspend caused fury among health union
leaders yesterday, who said it was generated by an unnecessarily harsh squeeze
on spending during the winter months when many NHS trusts economised by
closing wards, axing jobs and delaying operations until the start of the new
financial year in April. ... The biggest surplus was in the
north-west, where the NHS ended the financial
year with £161m in spare cash. Other surpluses included £116m in
Yorkshire and Humberside,
£92m in
London and £73m in the north-east. The only deficits came in the
eastern region, which overspent by
£152m, and the south-east coast, which was
nearly £55m in the red. John Carvel, social affairs editor
Tuesday May 29, 2007 The Guardian
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Call for hospital
debt write off. Alistair Burt, MP for North East Beds has called for
Bedford Hospital NHS Trust's 11m debt to be dropped after he revealed that
North and East Herts NHS Trust has been told it does not have to repay its
debts. NHS in the East said the trust had not recieved special treatment but
Mr Burt has been told by the trust that, due to accountancy changes and
success in cutting costs, "no further repayment was required to the Treasury"
Mr Burt said: "I was very surprised to learn that, quietly, the debt of £22m,
which East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust had last summer, had been wiped
out. Good for them. But Bedford confirmed it was still repaying theirs. Why
?" He said he has written to the East of England Strategic Health
Authority (EESHA) requesting the same treatment. In a statement EESHA said:
"Bedford Hospital has been treated the same as hospitals in Hertfordshire.
"Bedford Hospital is now in financial balance and ended 2006-07 with a small
surplus. The trust is now on a sound financial footing and is making
surpluses, which is in line with good financial practices. These surpluses
will be available to the trust for reinvestment in patient services." Summary by
Keep our NHS Public of BBC
20 September 2007
- NHS patients who complain risk victimisation, say inspectors. NHS
patients who complain about a poor standard of care are at risk of being
victimised, health inspectors warn today after the first national audit of the
complaints system in England. The Healthcare Commission said it launched the
review after becoming increasingly concerned about how hospitals and primary
care trusts respond when patients criticise the behaviour of staff or
conditions in hospitals or GP surgeries. After a risk assessment of all
trusts, it identified 32 hospitals, ambulance services and primary care trusts
which appeared to have the least satisfactory arrangements. Inspectors found
none had comprehensive safeguards to ensure that people who complained could
be confident their care would not suffer as a result. They identified
"significant lapses" at nine of the audited trusts. "The main concern was an
absence of systems to monitor whether care had changed in any way as a result
of a complaint," the commission said. Few trusts were using complaints to
learn how to improve the service. The commission named 12 trusts where it
found "significant lapses" in one or more of the national standards for
managing NHS complaints. It said this would affect their marks in the annual
performance tables. Another six were given formal warnings and 12 were told to
make improvements. Only two got a clean bill of health. The commission
investigates about 8,000 appeals a year from patients who have complained to a
hospital or primary care trust and are dissatisfied with the response. Its
report concluded: "Processes can be fragmented and applied inconsistently
within individual trusts and across the NHS ... the emphasis remains on the
process rather than seeking to find resolution for the person raising a
complaint." It criticised trusts for doing little to help people from ethnic
minority communities or patients with learning difficulties. Anna Walker, the
commission's chief executive, said: "Given that the NHS provides 380m
treatments a year, the number of complaints - 140,000 - is relatively small.
But when someone does complain, trusts need to respond well. Patients want
complaints resolved quickly and locally." The report praised one of the
largest and busiest acute hospitals in the north-west for learning from a
complaint about a patient who died after an MRSA infection. Relatives
expressed concern about staff wearing uniforms outside the hospital, risking
contamination. The trust devised a new dress code and invested in facilities
for staff to change clothes. Peter Walsh, chief executive of Action against
Medical Accidents, said: "This audit is further evidence, as if we needed it,
that the way many NHS organisations handle complaints adds insult to injury
and there is an urgent need for improvement."
John Carvel, social affairs editor
Monday
October 8, 2007 The Guardian. [The list is incomplete as it omits NHS
bodies in the
York area, despite the prolonged neglect of
Sharon Wilson.]
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Heat Map East of England
SHA forecasts
2006 07 East of England
Healthcare organisations weak for quality of services
Bedfordshire Heartlands Primary Care Trust
Watford and Three Rivers Primary Care Trust
West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust
Healthcare organisations weak for use of resources
Bedford Hospital NHS Trust
Bedfordshire Heartlands Primary Care Trust
Billericay, Brentwood and Wickford Primary Care Trust
Broadland Primary Care Trust
Cambridge City Primary Care Trust
Central Suffolk Primary Care Trust
Chelmsford Primary Care Trust
Colchester Primary Care Trust
Dacorum Primary Care Trust
East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust
Essex Rivers Healthcare NHS Trust
Great Yarmouth Primary Care Trust
Harlow Primary Care Trust
Hertsmere Primary Care Trust
Hinchingbrooke Healthcare NHS Trust
Huntingdonshire Primary Care Trust
Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust
Luton Teaching Primary Care Trust
Maldon and South Chelmsford Primary Care Trust
Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust
North Hertfordshire and Stevenage Primary Care Trust
North Norfolk Primary Care Trust
Norwich Primary Care Trust
Royston, Buntingford and Bishop's Stortford Primary Care Trust
South Cambridgeshire Primary Care Trust
South East Hertfordshire Primary Care Trust
Southern Norfolk Primary Care Trust
St Albans and Harpenden Primary Care Trust
Suffolk Coastal Primary Care Trust
Suffolk West Primary Care Trust
The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn NHS Trust
Uttlesford Primary Care Trust
Watford and Three Rivers Primary Care Trust
Waveney Primary Care Trust
Welwyn Hatfield Primary Care Trust
West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust
West Norfolk Primary Care Trust
West Suffolk Hospitals NHS Trust
Witham, Braintree and Halstead Care Trust
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