Burnham sets out role for private providers in his NHS Vision Now we know a bit more about what Andy Burnham meant when he told us that Labour would make the NHS the preferred provider and everyone shouted at him that this wasnt good enough - that the NHS needs to be the only provider, with the whole NHS privatisation nonsense shoved back into its evil genie bottle. This was we were lobbying the Labour Party Conference to accept the Restore the NHS Motion. Which the Party apparatchiks didnt even allow to be put to the Conference. This is an extract from a report in the Health Service Journal on 3rd Nov: Burnham sets out role for private providers in his NHS vision. Private health providers could play a significant role in providing NHS services under a Labour government, the shadow health secretary has suggested. In an exclusive interview with HSJ, the Andy Burnham gave his most detailed account of how his flagship policy that the NHS being the “preferred provider” for state run services would work. Mr Burnham, who first floated the model in 2009 while health secretary under the last Labour government, said the “simplest way to put it” was that the “first chance” would be given to the NHS. He said: “So, there is going to be change, but the NHS will get the first chance to change. “You don’t immediately go to an open competition, [the NHS] gets the chance to embrace the model. But [if commissioners judge the] change isn’t acceptable or not embraced fully, then [we] say: ‘We’ve given you first chance to change but it’s not worked. We now need to open up to different ways of doing things.’” The MP for Leigh also gave the all clear for NHS organisations bidding for contracts to bring in a private or third sector provider to deliver some of the work. He said: “The NHS preferred provider principle in non-negotiable for me. Because in the end the public NHS matters to me. “Once you’ve got that principle, then saying that in any locality, allowing people to develop systems that work from that principle but involve others, absolutely, that’s a healthy thing. I think you’d want that to be honest.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 21:47:27 +0000
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