High-profile NHS hospitals in England are to be encouraged by the government to set up profit-making branches abroad to help fund services in the UK.
An agency will aim to link hospitals such as Great Ormond Street with foreign governments that want access to British-run health services.
Investment would have to be drawn from hospitals' private UK work, but with profits ploughed back into the NHS.
I despair. At the same time as my local hospital in King's Lynn is under threat, not because it's bad but because it is "not viable" which is entirely down to the fact that it is small and remote, whilst doing essential work to service a community whose next nearest hospital is about 40 miles away, the government is looking for the diversion of NHS resources abroad.
To say that they have utterly forgotten the founding logic of the NHS is to dramatically understate the case. No doubt chief executives of hospital trusts taking their services elsewhere will be very well rewarded. Meanwhile people on many parts of the country will not get the services they need.
It's an extraordinary situation. And enough to make anyone committed to public service feel very angry.
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There’s nothing to say about the government and NHS other than ‘NOT IN MANIFESTO’.
You can see why the idea appeals. On the face of it, it’s potentially money for nothing. Somebody pays the NHS a fee for using the name ‘Great Ormond Street’ or ‘The Brompton Hospital’. No effort by those hospitals need be forthcoming. But that doesn’t seem likely to achieve all that much, so I guess you’d actually see some effort both to make it worthwhile for the new facility overseas and protection of the brand.
In which case it then becomes a bit of a risk. The investment cash has been earned on the basis of a UK taxpayer-funded hospital, so if the new facility fails the loss is to UK services. And there is the loss of focus for that hospital from the sole objective of great local services to something else .
An additional issue is surely about the sort of facility set up. If profit is the aim presumably these will be expensive private facilities for the rich – quite possibly in countries where the majority of residents have poor access to any healthcare. Do we really want the NHS exporting elsewhere the inequality it has done so much to combat since 1948?