{"id":15237,"date":"2018-05-17T10:55:47","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T09:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=15237"},"modified":"2020-11-12T12:58:44","modified_gmt":"2020-11-12T12:58:44","slug":"capita-nhs-patients-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=15237","title":{"rendered":"Capita failure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWay below standard\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 NHS services provided by outsourcing firm Capita to 39,000 GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists \u00e2\u20ac\u015bpotentially put patients at risk of serious harm\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scathing NAO report (May 17) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c coming just a day after MPs savaged Carillion\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bosses and the government for the construction giant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collapse<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c reiterates the folly of privatisation, Unite said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The NAO is now recommending that NHS England determine whether services should be taken back in-house.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

An estimated 1,000 GPs, dentists and opticians were prevented from working with patients because of Capita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bungling of the seven year NHS England primary care support contract, which was awarded to the firm in 2015.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The NAO said both NHS England and Capita<\/a> misunderstood the risks in outsourcing the services in order to slash costs by 35 per cent from the first year.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Widespread service failures<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

While Capita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s performance has improved, the NAO said primary care practitioners are still experiencing widespread service failures nearly three years on.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The NAO said Capita was incentivised through the contract to close existing services to minimise its losses.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Performance issues emerged in 2016 shortly after Capita started closing primary care support offices and making other changes to the service.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Capita acknowledges that it made performance issues worse by continuing to close support offices in summer 2016, even though it was aware its customer service centre was struggling to meet demand.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite this, NHS England was contractually unable to stop Capita’s aggressive office closure programme, even though it was having a harmful impact on service delivery.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

‘Serious harm risk’<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The report said Capita\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s failure to deliver services \u00e2\u20ac\u015bpotentially put patients at risk of serious harm\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, including 87 women who were notified incorrectly that they were no longer part of the cervical screening programme.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

NAO head Amyas Morse said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWhile NHS England has achieved financial savings and some services have now improved, value for money is about more than just cost reduction.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bIt is deeply unsatisfactory that, two and a half years into the contract, NHS England and Capita have not yet reached the level of partnership working required to make a contract like this work effectively.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unite lauded the NAO for performing a \u00e2\u20ac\u015bsterling public service\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 in highlighting the failures in the seven year contract.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis scathing report once more highlights the folly of privatising NHS services where the profit motive trumps patient care \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the time has come for the government to say \u00e2\u20ac\u0098enough is enough\u00e2\u20ac\u2122,\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 said Unite national officer for health Colenzo Jarrett-Thorpe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThe NAO findings are given extra pungency by yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s excoriating report by two Commons select committees into the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion<\/a> in January.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He added, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bHow many more reports are needed to reinforce the case that the privatisation of NHS<\/a> services short changes patients in particular and the taxpayer in general?\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The NAO report follows a decision<\/a> on Tuesday by Unite members employed by Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust to take strike action over plans to outsource their jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWay below standard\u00e2\u20ac\u0165 NHS services provided by outsourcing firm Capita to 39,000 GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists \u00e2\u20ac\u015bpotentially put patients at risk of serious harm\u00e2\u20ac\u0165, the National Audit Office (NAO) has said.   Today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scathing NAO report (May 17) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c coming just a day after MPs savaged Carillion\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bosses and the government for the construction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2802,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[562,29,647,252],"wps_subtitle":"Outsourcing firm put NHS patients at risk of serious harm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15237"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15237"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26187,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15237\/revisions\/26187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}