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A flagship privately run NHS hospital is cutting more staff in an attempt to make ?311m budget savings. Financial losses at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon are forecast to be ?3.5m at the end of the financial year this month, three times more than planned. Despite a survey last month publicising greatly improved patient satisfaction at Hinchingbrooke since its management takeover by Circle Holdings in February 2012, staff believe the failure to meet its ?2m debt target is behind the job cuts.
The takeover deal, the first of its kind in the UK, involved the closure-threatened hospital being taken over by Circle for a 10-year period. The move is widely seen as a blueprint for the future of many NHS trusts. The fate of the small district general hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, which has a ?107m turnover and serves a 160,000-strong population, is being watched closely by many other hospitals in the run-up to the Health and Social Care Act coming into force on 1 April. The Act opens up the entire health service to private providers. Critics fear it will let companies strip the NHS of its easiest, most profitable procedures, but the Government says it has put services out only for "competition on quality, not price".
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...ws/debts-put-nhs-reforms-at-risk-8537552.html
The takeover deal, the first of its kind in the UK, involved the closure-threatened hospital being taken over by Circle for a 10-year period. The move is widely seen as a blueprint for the future of many NHS trusts. The fate of the small district general hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, which has a ?107m turnover and serves a 160,000-strong population, is being watched closely by many other hospitals in the run-up to the Health and Social Care Act coming into force on 1 April. The Act opens up the entire health service to private providers. Critics fear it will let companies strip the NHS of its easiest, most profitable procedures, but the Government says it has put services out only for "competition on quality, not price".
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...ws/debts-put-nhs-reforms-at-risk-8537552.html
