Campaigners are holding a protest tug-of-war to highlight what they say is the threat to an NHS doctor’s surgery from a private company.
The Brighton surgery is currently run by a community interest company (CIC) but NHS commissioners were preparing to hand the contract to run the service to One Medical Group, in Leeds.
The Wellsbourne practice, in Whitehawk, is currently run by the Wellsbourne Healthcare CIC after the previous private contractor walked away.
Now, patients and their supporters are stepping up their campaign against the proposed change instigated by the Sussex Integrated Care Board (ICB), also known as NHS Sussex.
The CIC has appealed against the decision by the NHS commissioners, with the backing of Labour councillors Gill Williams and David McGregor who represent Whitehawk and Marina ward.
The pair have attended a number of events in the community to hear first-hand about patients’ concerns.
And the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven, Chris Ward, has started a petition on his website headed Save Wellsbourne Healthcare – Keep Local Trusted GP Care in Whitehawk. It has almost 3,000 signatures.
The tug-of-war protest has been organised by Sussex Defend the NHS and is due to take place at Brighton War Memorial, in Old Steine, at 11am on Saturday 14 June.
One campaigner, Janet Sang, said: “We in Sussex Defend NHS are extremely concerned at the prospect of an effective and well- loved GP service being replaced by a private company which would run the service as a profit-making concern.
“One Medical Group is based in Leeds and has already been found inadequate in other parts of the UK.
“We believe this is simply a cost-cutting exercise by the local ICB and is not in the best interests of the people of Whitehawk.”
Councillor McGregor said that he planned to attend the event to keep the surgery as it is in Whitehawk.
He said: “I’ll continue to support the efforts to get the decision reversed. The current team of Wellsbourne Healthcare CIC have done a fantastic job and NHS Sussex should reconsider.”
NHS Sussex said: “Our key priority is to ensure that people across Sussex can receive the NHS help and support that they need.
“We are currently procuring a new contract for primary care services for people living in the Whitehawk area of Brighton, a GP practice population of 8,366.
“This procurement has had to take place because the current contract to run these services has come to an end.
“And for GP services to continue in this area we have had to start a new contract and follow due process to put that in place.
“We have also taken the opportunity to ensure that the new contract is designed to meet the current and future needs of the local population, which is one of the most deprived areas in Sussex, and is focused on improving the health of the population through increased community involvement, prevention initiatives and increased support for registered patients.
“National regulations mean we have had to follow an open procurement process, with the ability for all parties with interest in providing services to this community to submit an application.
“Each bid is fully considered and evaluated, based on the information that is shared during the procurement process.
“This process is still under way and, as a result, we are unable to comment further until the procurement has officially been completed.
“However, we have seen and are aware of the concern being raised to us and we will respond further as soon as we are able.”
To sign the petition, click here.
Crikey, this one is obscure. So the decision is not yet made and the NHS is following an open procurement process whereby providers bid for the business. This has happened because the current time limited contract is approaching its end.
An open procurement process is a legal requirement and if the NHS were not to follow it then they could be sued for not allowing other providers the chance to bid.
In fact if it was a closed shop we would be facing accusations of cronyism and potential fraud . I am sure that if the current provider is giving good value for money and there are no other concerns then they will be in a good place to continue and be awarded the next contract.
There does seem to be grounds for appeal as a part of the process involves community consultation, which has not happened. Won’t save Wellsbourne, but it will reset the process so it can be done fairly.
There’s a wider question of fairness of the contract procurement; it favours large number-based conglomerates such as One Medical, and gives very little weighting to social impact initiatives outside of the building – something that Wellsbourne does a lot of with a very clear positive evidence base. It is arguably the latter that people see on the day-to-day.
For one small example of a larger whole, preventative healthcare through mindful movement has a significant reduction in MSK issues needed to be consulted on by the GP, meaning waiting lists are organically reduced.
So they are committed to improving the health of local people through community involvement? Can they please explain how a profit-driven conglomerate based in Leeds with a track record of failure will do better than a locally based CIC. It appears illogical and the system is profoundly flawed if my view is incorrect.
I was reading their directors report on Companies House. It felt more like they were focused on streamlining and reducing costs of service rather than improving health outcomes, almost verbatim.
It also strikes me as odd that Labour are making noise about all this and there’s silence about the 50% cuts to integrated care boards – that will lead to more local services being cut. The Government are spinning the ICB cuts as if it’s just a bureaucratic posts that will be chopped, but it’s a bit all Trumpian and you can’t make cuts of 50% without services being affected. When it comes to ICBs, that will mean even more issues when it comes to commissioning services if they have less resources.
Where’s the noise from Labour councillors and Labour MPs on this?
I am not with the Wellsbourne Practice, although I live in their catchment area, so I have no personal axe to grind in this. However, I would like to make some general comments on how patients have been treated by the non-Brighton-based NHS authorities overseeing GP services and contracts in Brighton over the years. I used to be registered at Eaton Place Surgery in Kemp Town. The two GPs there apparently had a list of around 6,000 patients and wanted to retire, which they did eventually. This happened in 2014/2015. Both the then local MP and Nancy Platts tried to save the surgery and for a while it looked as if their efforts might be successful but early in 2015 NHS England decided that all these patients could be absorbed by other local practices. As I recall, the remaining patients of Eaton Place (some patients had already registered elsewhere, but others were waiting to see if the existing surgery would be saved) ended up forming queues at the surgery to pick one of maybe two practices and get registered. Ardingly Court was one option and it may be that Wellsbourne, as it was then run (not by Wellsbourne CIC, who came along later and rescued it) was another. A lot of people registered at Ardingly Court and others registered elsewhere.
I don’t know much about the history of the Wellsbourne Practice and who ran it before the CIC but I think a private provider handed back the contract and walked away – unsurprisingly, if this is right, because Whitehawk, where a large number of the patients live, was and is a highly deprived area, and, unless the provider was prepared to invest a lot of dedication and hands-on resources into the practice, it was sure to fail if the motivation was profit. It did fail under that model. It was actually Ardingly Court that rescued Wellsbourne. I believe that some of the partners there set up the CIC and that one or two of them are still involved in it and want to continue. The CQC rates it ’good’ (albeit that they haven’t inspected it for a very long time) and, as far as I know, many patients are satisfied with it – hence the outcry at the prospect of going back to the previously failed model, especially when the proposed profit-based provider has no current presence anywhere in or near to the area. Unless the NHS proposes to pay it several arms and legs more than it currently pays the CIC, which I understand it isn’t – it apparently intends to pay less – then the services would most likely be pared down to the bone because that would be the only way for this new entity to make any profit, if it can, and before long we might well be back in the position we were in before the CIC took over. It doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps the answer lies in changing the way GP surgeries are run, I.e just make them part of the NHS and not all individual businesses?
Unfortunately, Chris, I think we’ve long passed that point, which is how we now end up in situations like this. Going back well over 20 years, when I lived elsewhere, your idea was the norm (I can’t speak for Brighton, as I wasn’t here, but I imagine it was fairly similar). I had the same GP practice as I’d had all my life (not the same doctors as when I was a child, obviously, but old doctors had retired, new ones had arrived and, generally speaking, I knew nearly all of them throughout). Originally they operated from an old house, but later on the houses were demolished and a new centre was built, which had some clinical facilities on site. This then expanded to encompass two GP practices with more clinical facilities, but it still worked much as usual. After I moved the whole facility was taken over by a company of some kind and when I looked it up just now I can’t actually fathom what’s happened to it, but it does seem to have fragmented into multiple sites all run by the same company (I think, but I’m not too sure).
The background to much of what’s happening now is that many GPs have retired early or left the NHS for a multitude of reasons (patient overload and pay/pensions issues being commonly cited – and we have a similar situation with NHS dentists or the dire lack of them) and another tranche have gone part-time for reasons of work/lifestyle balance. Over the years large sums of money have been poured into the NHS, but much of it didn’t seem to trickle down to the ‘coalface’: however ‘management bodies’ proliferated exponentially. This current government seems to be trying to do something about all that but it might well be too late as far as the ‘human factor’ is concerned. Digitisation, AI and apps and taking an axe to bodies like NHS England are all very well, but at the end of the day many people want or need to be able to get an appointment to see a real doctor face to face. From what I’ve read, Wellsbourne CIC does more than that.
Having said all that, – and I don’t have any particular first-hand knowledge of Wellsbourne CIC – it was, when formed, the solution to a very dire situation, Had the CIC not stepped into the void, what would have happened? Would the NHS have found another private company which might well have walked away just as the previous one did, or would they have done what they usually did – try to cram all these people into other practices, as they did with the Eaton Place people?
We now seem to be back to panic-stricken cost-cutting one more time – hand over a cheaper private contract to a profit-making concern who will probably have to cut the current services to suit their profit model (it won’t work for them otherwise, as history has proved) and they may walk away anyway in due course when they find it’s not working as they envisaged (and what of the patients and their needs while all that’s going on – and afterwards?)
Anyway, I’ve digressed shamefully from what you suggested, but I don’t think direct employment for all GPs by the NHS can work now – the NHS is too far gone for that – unless they tackle all of the pay and conditions issues properly and effectively, which Government shows no signs of doing.