"The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it"
Aneurin Bevan

Wednesday 1 August 2012

Hinchingbrooke double fail

The Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust Chief Executive's & Franchise Representative's Report (franchise representative represents Circle) has the following quote:

Mark Simmonds MP for Boston and Skegness visited the trust on 6 July and was able to attend a meeting about the positive changes that have been implemented in our Emergency Department this week. He had this to say: "In this hospital you can change the way the NHS works, in my view for the better, you are at the frontier of the way healthcare is going to be provided in the future. I hope patients and the local community recognise the positive changes that have been made and provide sufficient support and recommend it to their family and friends."
Hinchingbrooke is in Cambridgeshire, Boston and Skegness is in Lincolnshire, so this is not a quote from a local MP. One has to wonder why Hinchingbrooke is inviting seemingly random MPs to inspect their hospital. Do you think his invitation has to do with Simmonds' Register of Members Financial Interest:

Strategic adviser to Circle Healthcare (social enterprise), 42 Welbeck Street, London W1.
March 2011, £12,500 quarterly fee received. Hours: 10 hrs per month. (Registered 3 May 2011)
June 2011, £12,500 quarterly fee received. Hours: 10 hrs per month.
Late entry to which the rectification procedure was applied on 6 March 2012. See paragraph 108 of the Guide to the Rules.
(Registered 3 October 2011)
Simmonds was reluctant to declare that he was paid £12,000 a quarter (£50,000 a year) by Circle, and earlier this year had to apologise to parliament for deceiving them like this. Can someone explain to me why Hinchingbrooke, who are franchised to Circle, are quoting an MP who is paid by Circle? This is hardly an independent view, the public are being fed a biassed statement.

However, a rate of £1,250/3 per hour is pretty steep*, and you would expect that when you pay someone this large amount of money the recipient would come up with something more enthusiastic than "you are at the frontier of the way healthcare is going to be provided in the future". For that amount of money (£1,250/3 = £420 per hour) I would expect "get your asses down here right now, this place is brilliant!"

So not only is Hinchingbrooke duping the public, they are not getting value for money, either. Double fail.

[* oops arithmetic error corrected as per comments]

3 comments:

  1. *biased

    (Paragraph 5)

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  2. As much as I may agree with your sentiment, I'm struggling to agree with your mathematics.

    A quarterly rate of £12,500 for 10 hours work PER MONTH, does not and never will equate to an hourly rate of £1,250. Try £416.67.

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  3. Circle has bragged that it will increase its patient quota by one million....well here is two you can't count on..cos we are dumping this this place like a used condom....

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