The London Heart Hospital purchased by the NHS

The London Heart Hospital has been purchased by the NHS (Middlesex/UCH Group). It will continue as a state of the art specialist cardiac unit and will apparently treat both NHS and private patients.

The whole story behind the development of this hospital and its subsequent failure to thrive in the fully private sector in central London has yet to be told. Despite the enthusiasm of its financial backers and of a large number of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons the Heart Hospital continued to lose money. Part of its demise was no doubt due to the hard line taken by PPP who would not recognise the hospital, thus denying their clients of top class facilities and certainly impacting on the income of the hospital. PPP will have to explain their position on this matter, which they have done to some extent by saying that they were worried about standards within the hospital. This argument would seem difficult to sustain given the fact that none of the other major insurers saw a problem. Naturally, the fact that when the Heart Hospital opened its doors PPP was involved itself in providing cardiac services in central London gave rise to many complaints from the Chairman and managers of the Heart Hospital, but to little avail.

Following the purchase of the Heart Hospital by the NHS, the news media reacted in a typical fashion with sharply polarised views ranging from those who saw this as a financial bargain and a step to improving the care for NHS patients to those who rejected the concept and saw the purchase as "bail out" of a defunct private establishment. This reaction is but a foretaste of what will happen as the government pursues its agenda of a concordat and increasing links between the NHS and the private sector.

more news stories...