8th August 2024

Private sector not the solution
1) The private sector does not train and recruit its own workforce, it relies on NHS-trained health workers to deliver its services. 2) private sector delivery of care is commonly more expensive than when the NHS does it itself. It means our taxes are going out the door of the NHS and into the pockets of shareholders execs. 3) Private providers reject patients with more complex and therefore resource-draining needs; in other words they cherry-pick. For more click here.

NHS private profits: £10 billion a week
A new analysis by We Own It reveals that £6.7 billion, or £10 million each week, has left the NHS’s budget in the form of profits on all private contracts given by the NHS from January 2012 to May 2024.

Think Milburn is good for the NHS?
Then think again. Here’s a run down of Alan Milburn’s effect on the NHS, his support for greater private sector involvement, of expanding PFI in the NHS saying “[PFI] is cheaper, better, better value for money.. We know different don’t we.

NHSE instructs trusts to use FDP
This article is behind a paywall. It tells us that a £330 million contract to provide the FDP was awarded to US firm Palantir last November. NHS England has told trusts they must begin to use the national Federated Data Platform and its analytic products within two years. The move to require its use marks a sharp departure from the approach taken at the platform’s launch. One comment added  “…[the FDP] program remains operationally unproven. It offers a tiny number of things that Trusts neither want nor need, Is delivered by a supplier they don’t trust…”

Two child benefit cap and hospital admissions
A study demonstrates that curbing child poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit cap would save hundreds of lives a year and avoid thousands of admissions to hospital.