NHS London has signed a £7 million contract with a group of multi-national privateers to provide business training for GPs – even before the Health and Social Care Bill, which privatises primary care, is passed by parliament.
BMA General Council member Anna Athow told News Line: ‘This decision shows the government’s contempt for the medical profession and its unions.’
The privatising move has been funded from London’s Multi Professional Education and Training (MPET) budget, at a cost of £75,000 per ‘pathfinder’, plus 40p per patient.
NHS London said all 38 of the capital’s ‘Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)’ are expected to sign up within weeks, and that £3.7 million has been allocated for ‘leadership training’ for managers and clinicians.
It added that the ‘approved commissioning partners’, which include KPMG, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Capita, McKinsey, Ernst and Young, Capsticks Solicitors, Binder Dijker Otte, and Entrusted Health Partnership, ‘will offer CCGs coaching, leadership plans, resources and how-to guides’.
Hannah Farrar, Director of Strategy and Commissioning Development at NHS London, said: ‘CCGs must become strong, strategic and accountable bodies able to manage health budgets and prioritise resources,’ adding that ‘support is needed from outside organisations with renowned management expertise’.
BMA General Council member Anna Athow commented: ‘This government feels confident to authorise huge payouts to a consortium of multinational management consultants from raiding the Education and Training budget which should be used to train doctors and others in clinical skills.
‘This £7m of NHS Education money, is to be used to train selected GPs how to manage privatising CCGs.
‘These selected GPs are to be coached in how to run these new CCGs, so that they achieve the authorisation of the NHS Commissioning Board.
‘Only when they have learned how to ration the budget, to outsource care to “any willing provider,” and close down local hospitals, will they be deemed authorised enough to run their CCGs.
‘To their eternal shame the Royal College of General Practitioners has got involved in the ‘mentoring for the market’, as the new consortium includes the RCGPs centre for Commissioning and Consultancy- Ashridge Alliance.
‘In January, a similar consortium was given a contract to coach the first eight GP pathfinder consortiums in London.
‘These contracts are being signed over the heads of local GPs, who want nothing to do with them.
‘This is a terrible signal of what is to come if it is not stopped. The government plan is that all the financial and back office functions of the CCGs throughout England will be handed to these privateers, with longterm billion pound contracts.
‘Once in the saddle, they can then hand over £60bn of NHS money to private medical providers.
‘The BMA should be withdrawing collaboration with pathfinder CCGs and warning against the outsourcing of commissioning functions to these multinationals, not helping to advise on them.’