§ Mr. DobsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of(a) former and (b) seconded NHS staff who will be working in private diagnostic and treatment centres. [131908]
§ Mr. HuttonThe exact number of professional staff working in these new units will be finalised in the next stage of negotiations leading to contract close.
§ Mr. DobsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health for what reasons the bids from(a) BUPA and (b) BMI to run private diagnostic and treatment centres were unsuccessful. [131910]
§ Mr. HuttonThe procurement process for independent sector treatment centres involved inviting bids from a wide range of independent health care sector organisations, which included BUPA and BMI.
The quality of bid submissions was very high and many companies, including BUPA and BMI were able to meet the stringent clinical standards requirements that had been set. The Department, along with local national health service sponsors, was also seeking examples of: additionality of staff, to avoid any disruption to the local NHS and to ensure that the 343W activity provided in these units was additional to existing work being handled in NHS facilities; innovative solutions in terms of methods of working and patient experience; and value for money in terms of the costs of each procedure, and the affordability of this activity for the local NHS health economy. In order to provide fairness in the evaluation process the bids for all schemes were evaluated by a team made up from central Departmental experts in procurement and clinical practice and local NHS clinicians and managers representing the sponsors of the schemes. The resulting preferred bidders and reserve bidders were therefore chosen on the basis of the criteria and BUPA and BMI were not able to demonstrate their competitiveness on enough of these to warrant their inclusion.
§ Mr. DobsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health whether(a) NHS hospitals and (b) diagnostic and treatment centres will be paid more than the standard tariff for operations to reflect start-up costs they may incur. [131911]
§ Mr. HuttonFrom this year, the Government have introduced a new financial system to provide a transparent, rules-based system for paying providers of services to national health service patients. Primary care trusts (PCTs) will commission the volume of activity required to deliver service priorities, adjusted for case-mix from a plurality of providers on the basis of a standard national price tariff, adjusted for regional variation in wages and other costs of service delivery. By 2008, all NHS providers will be required to meet tariff.
The Department is currently consulting on whether and how additional support above tariff should be provided for up-front revenue costs of new investment. However, we expect many of the contracts for new independent sector treatment centres to be at or below tariff. Where in the short-term we may initially pay slightly more than tariff to some independent sector providers, this is to cover start-up costs so that the new facilities open as quickly as possible to treat more patients, reduce waiting lists and bring additional clinical staff to treat NHS patients. In these cases, local PCTs commissioning care from these new units will not be disadvantaged.
§ Mr. DobsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he will require private diagnostic and treatment centres to have intensive care beds. [131912]
§ Mr. HuttonTreatment centres offer high quality, pre-booked surgery and diagnosis facilities for the treatment of routine, elective national health service patients and will not be required to have intensive care beds. They will be expected to be able to deal with typical surgical problems to the same standards as NHS providers. Local trusts, primary care trusts and new providers will agree protocols for referring and transferring patients who require emergency or urgent care that cannot be provided by the treatment centre.