Private sector secures more contracts to run NHS services in region

Contracts running into millions of pounds have been awarded across the region to run community health services under the flagship Any Qualified Provider initiative.

Several dozen private businesses are among those awarded contracts under the venture.

Ministers claim it will give patients wider choice and drive up both quality and access to care but Labour has branded it the “biggest privatisation in NHS history”.

Among the latest deals, four firms have been awarded 
contracts to run services providing diagnostic MRI scans 
alongside two local NHS trusts in Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield.

Ten non-NHS providers including several groups of local doctors are among 12 organisations awarded a deal to provide non-obstetric ultrasound services in the area.

Two of the firms – Global Diagnostics and Care UK – have also won contracts to run a similar service in the East Riding and North Lincolnshire alongside a third local company and two NHS trusts.

A £600,000 annual contract to provide pain services to thousands of people in the East Riding and Hull has been awarded to the City Healthcare Partnership social enterprise and the Humber NHS Foundation Trust.

Hearing services in Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield will be provided by Novus, a company set up by local GPs and hospital specialists, and two other private businesses, InHealth and Specsavers, as well as two local NHS trusts.

Psychological services in Calderdale will be provided by a NHS trust and a not-for-profit firm which previously ran care.

Some of the services are already up and running and others launch this month and in the new year.

Details of schemes in South Yorkshire and several other areas have already been made public.