§ 6. Mr. Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend)What plans the Department has to extend the private sector's role in the provision of NHS services in the coming year. [129953]
§ The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr. John Hutton)We will use independent providers where it represents good value for money, increases NHS capacity and reduces the amount of time that NHS patients would otherwise have to wait for their treatment. In line with our manifesto commitments, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced last week the preferred providers who will operate 26 new treatment centres for NHS patients, some of which will begin to operate later this year.
§ Mr. BrownThe national health service has entered into a contract with the American company, UnitedHealthcare, to pilot its Evercare system of care for the elderly in 10 pilot areas. Now that the pilots have been up and running for a while, will my right hon. Friend tell the House whether the Americans are achieving the substantial growth that they forecast in the annual report, and whether the NHS is achieving the 50 per cent. reductions and consequent savings in the pilot areas?
§ Mr. HuttonI am afraid that I do not have that information to give to my right hon. Friend, but I shall certainly arrange to send it to him. On the Evercare arrangements, the American company is providing primary care trusts with a consultancy—a service and systems redesign service—to allow NHS staff to improve the care that they provide to NHS patients. It is a sensible and useful arrangement that has been entered into at a local level. All the research data in the US show the success of the Evercare model and I am confident that it will have a similar effect in England.
§ Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon)The Minister said that good value for money was a necessary factor for private sector operations, so does he accept that the cost per case at the Oxford eye hospital is less than £400 per cataract, whereas purchasers who want to buy services for patients at the best possible value are being forced to pay more than £750 per case under the private sector scheme, not counting the market forces premium? Why did the Secretary of State say that 20,000 people in the Thames valley were waiting for cataract operations when the Department's own website says that it is only 6,000? Is it not the case that only the dodgy figures make the position anything like value for money, and is not the proposal ideological rather than one that gives quality, value-for-money care for patients?
§ Mr. HuttonNo. I have had many questions from the hon. Gentleman, but I have yet to hear him put one sensible question to any Minister in the Department of Health. He is in the unique position of agreeing with everything in principle, but opposing everything in practice. Labour Members have one simple word to characterise that—opportunism.
709 On the specific example that the hon. Gentleman provided, if 6,000 people are waiting for their operation, that is 6,000 too many. By getting additional capacity into Oxfordshire, we are freeing the other capacity of the Oxford eye hospital so that it can concentrate on more specific procedures. The hon. Gentleman needs to get his act—and his figures—together, because he is talking complete and utter cobblers.
§ Mr. David Hinchliffe (Wakefield)Will the Government undertake a review of the concordat with the private sector and examine the extent to which NHS consultants who have private practices are seeing NHS patients in those practices and are being paid substantial amounts to do so? Some of my constituents have raised concerns about how they have had to wait to see an NHS consultant. They find it bizarre then to see them in private hospitals and private clinics paid for by the NHS, especially when many of the NHS waiting list problems arise as a direct consequence of consultants' private practice.
§ Mr. HuttonWe keep all those systems and arrangements under careful and close review. It might also be of some help to hon. Members, especially my hon. Friends, if I draw their attention to the new arrangements that I hope will apply in the new consultants contract, should consultants agree it, which would try to provide a better way to regulate the relationship between private and NHS practice. That is an important development that the NHS should seek to bring to a closure.
§ Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham)In a debate just before the recess, the Chancellor positively frothed at the mouth at the thought of moving patients into the private sector and he brandished a price list that claimed that operations by independent sector providers typically cost twice as much as in the NHS. If so, why have the Minister and the Chancellor already signed a concordat for 100,000 operations with private providers such as BUPA this year? Why are they now accelerating that process by signing up mostly foreign providers to perform an additional 250,000 operations in the new diagnostic and treatment centres? Or were the Chancellor's figures completely misleading? Will the Minister now publish the real comparable cost of all operations in the NHS, those purchased by the NHS from the independent sector in DTCs, and those performed on those NHS escapees sent to hospitals on the continent?
§ Mr. HuttonThe hon. Gentleman has moved from using the language of total politics last week to talking complete rubbish this week. The treatment centre programme will introduce significant additional capacity into the NHS at good value for money prices—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman does not want to listen, and for good reason, because I will put him right on those matters. The big difference that he should recognise—the Opposition like to think of themselves as people of business—is that the NHS obtains a better price for the operations if they are bought in bulk, instead of being purchased on the spot market. The prices will be significantly lower. The final prices have still to be agreed, but my right hon. Friend and I are of 710 the one view that this approach represents a sensible direction for the NHS that will provide value for money for NHS patients.