Comments on: John Lewis-style – The Bath Clinic http://www.247professionalhealth.com/2010/01/john-lewis-style-the-bath-clinic/ 247 Professional Health is a staff and employment agency to the health care sector Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:29:57 +0100 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Centrally http://www.247professionalhealth.com/2010/01/john-lewis-style-the-bath-clinic/comment-page-1/#comment-136 Centrally Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:11:25 +0000 http://www.247professionalhealth.com/?p=1891#comment-136 Circle – which hopes to open up to 30 "employee-owned" John Lewis - style hospitals to compete with the health service over the next few years – and other private health firms will present a serious challenge to the NHS, Carter said. The private sector was growing thanks to an NHS initiative that enables patients to choose where their operation is carried out using a menu of NHS and private hospitals . "If that means [Circle] building lots of [new hospitals] then inevitably, in the long term, acute hospitals will close." But he warned that the ability of private hospitals to win NHS contracts must not fatally undermine the health service. He told the conference: "As you succeed in getting more and more business, the incumbent's tactic is to retreat slowly. "So you have to encourage innovation, but we have to ensure that as the [medical] traffic flows away from the existing services they don't degrade to the point of collapse. You can't let them." Carter, a businessman and former private healthcare executive, is currently chair of the quango set up to adjudicate on competition issues in the NHS. He holds a number of board positions in Whitehall, was chair of Sport England between 2002 and 2006, and headed government reviews into offender management and legal aid. The NHS co-operation and competition panel he chairs is currently examining a formal non-legal "class action" complaint from hundreds of charities and private health providers over an annoucement last year by the health secretary Andy Burnham that the NHS was the "preferred provider" of health services. They argue this would exlude them from NHS contracts and breaches health service rules on choice and competition.Owen Asked about Burnham's comments by members of the conference audience, Carter declined to comment. But he said he believed competition was now entrenched in the ethos of the health service and would not disappear. Circle – which hopes to open up to 30 “employee-owned” John Lewis – style hospitals to compete with the health service over the next few years – and other private health firms will present a serious challenge to the NHS, Carter said.

The private sector was growing thanks to an NHS initiative that enables patients to choose where their operation is carried out using a menu of NHS and private hospitals . “If that means [Circle] building lots of [new hospitals] then inevitably, in the long term, acute hospitals will close.”

But he warned that the ability of private hospitals to win NHS contracts must not fatally undermine the health service. He told the conference: “As you succeed in getting more and more business, the incumbent’s tactic is to retreat slowly.

“So you have to encourage innovation, but we have to ensure that as the [medical] traffic flows away from the existing services they don’t degrade to the point of collapse. You can’t let them.”

Carter, a businessman and former private healthcare executive, is currently chair of the quango set up to adjudicate on competition issues in the NHS. He holds a number of board positions in Whitehall, was chair of Sport England between 2002 and 2006, and headed government reviews into offender management and legal aid.

The NHS co-operation and competition panel he chairs is currently examining a formal non-legal “class action” complaint from hundreds of charities and private health providers over an annoucement last year by the health secretary Andy Burnham that the NHS was the “preferred provider” of health services. They argue this would exlude them from NHS contracts and breaches health service rules on choice and competition.Owen

Asked about Burnham’s comments by members of the conference audience, Carter declined to comment. But he said he believed competition was now entrenched in the ethos of the health service and would not disappear.

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