Health chiefs come under fire (From Worcester News)

Health chiefs come under fire

2:20am Monday 15th March 2010 in

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HEALTH bosses have come under attack for selling off Worcestershire’s out-of-hours contract to a big company, ‘squeezing out’ smaller competitors.

Urgent Health UK, a federation of social enterprise out-of-hours providers, has criticised NHS Worcestershire for selling off its contract with Take Care Now (TCN) to a new provider, Harmoni.

Instead, the federation wanted NHS Worcestershire to put the £4.3 million a year contract out to tender to give smaller organisations a chance to run the service which provides care to patients at evenings and weekends when their GP surgeries may be closed.

TCN is the subject of an investigation by national watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Dr John Horrocks, chief executive of Urgent Health UK, said: “Hundreds of thousands of patients are served by these contracts and it is in their interests to ensure that these vital healthcare services are not passed from company to company without appropriate scrutiny, including patient safety.

He added: “We wish to request that reforms are introduced immediately to ensure transparency in service commissioning and - with reference to this particular issue - prevent commercial entities from selling on out-of-hours contracts with the ‘passive permission’ of their primary care trust commissioners.”

NHS Worcestershire agreed a five year contract with TCN which started on October 1, 2008.

An NHS Worcestershire spokesman said: “NHS Worcestershire does not have the option of re-procuring the service unless the current contract is terminated by either party. Neither party intends to do this.”