Welcome to the Winter newsletter from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest.
This is the first CHPI newsletter since July last year. We have not been inactive during this time – far from it – but after operating for over two years on the basis of almost solely voluntary work we decided to devote the summer of 2015 to fundraising, with a view to moving onto a professional footing in 2016. By the end of the year we were finally in a position to recruit a full-time researcher and to establish a new basis for effective management through two new initiatives: linking up with a related charity, Medact, and substantially enlarging the management team.
Medact (www.medact.org) is a 20 year-old charity which shares the values of the CHPI and ‘educates, analyses and campaigns for global health on issues related to conflict, poverty and the environment’. The intention is to share infrastructure costs and services with Medact while maintaining the CHPI as an independent project/organisation with its own autonomous management team. Discussions on effecting the link are well advanced and the management team has been greatly strengthened by the addition of two new members, while the recruitment of a researcher will be put in hand shortly. Details of these arrangements will be given in our next newsletter. The publication of reports, papers and blogs will be resumed soon, along with new initiatives, to be undertaken in collaboration with Medact and other organisations, aimed at enhancing the CHPI’s impact.
Although in 2015 our resources were heavily committed to this reorganisation we published two major reports, with considerable impact, in addition to a series of blogs, and undertook a number of other related activities, noted below. We are very grateful to all our supporters and contributors for their continued support and we look forward to having a reinforced impact in the coming year.
Keir Wright-Whyte
CHPI Executive Management Team
Report: Safety of NHS patients in private hospitals
Using findings from the Care Quality Commission’s first new-style reports on private hospitals our November 2015 report found that there continue to be significant distinctive risks to patient safety in private hospitals in England, to which a growing number of NHS patients (now half a million a year) are potentially exposed. The report was covered by the Times, the Independent, and the British Medical Journal. Read it here.
Report: The outsourcing of NHS services to the private sector
Using data from a survey of 211 CCGs our recent report identified for the first time that CCGs now hold 15,000 contracts with private providers worth over £9 billion a year. We also found a lack of capacity within CCGs to monitor these contracts and hold private providers to account. This raises significant questions about how CCGs can secure value for money and quality services when NHS services are outsourced. Read national press coverage of the report here and Colin Leys' blog on the LSE Policy blog.
Workshop on Whistleblowing held by Professor Marianna Fotaki
In June 2015 Professor Marianna Fotaki ran a successful Stakeholders Engagement Workshop and Final Conference on "Speaking Out in contemporary organisations: What makes it possible?", arising from a research project on whistleblowing conducted jointly with Dr Kate Kenny of Queen’s University Belfast. The conference was attended by a wide range of stakeholders - government, regulatory bodies, businesses, the media, academics and whistleblowers, including several from the NHS.
Other activities
In April 2015 our 2014 report on patient safety in private hospitals was presented to a conference on ‘Doctors, Manslaughter and Avoidable Harm’, arising from the 2013 conviction of a surgeon for manslaughter at a private hospital in north London.
In Nov 2015 Colin Leys took part in a Radio 5 Live discussion of patient safety in private hospitals, and in December 2015 he presented our April 2015 report on commissioning (The contracting NHS) to the annual conference of the British Society for Dental Health.
