NHS preferred provider policy in spotlight as election approaches‏

The FT reports that ‘private sector hopes that a significant reorganisation of National Health Service services now under way would rapidly open up a £10bn market in NHS care have been dashed’.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/afd4f168-4014-11df-8d23-00144feabdc0.html?
Under a new NHS commissioning regime designed to create a purchaser/provider split, it is reported that none of the primary care trusts in England are putting district nursing and other community services out to competitive tender.

This follows intensive campaigning by UNISON and other health unions last year which secured a concession from Health Secretary Andy Burnham that the NHS workforce would be the ‘preferred provider’ of NHS services.

Counter lobbying by the public services industrial complex – led by private health care companies and their third sector patsies – continues to challenge this policy and in a reference to the NHS Co-operation and Competition Panel they continue to push for competitive tendering with an opportunistic focus on ‘failing’ NHS services.