Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire today became the first NHS hospital to come under the control of a private, for-profit company. The debt-ridden hospital has been taken over by Circle Health with specific timelines set for improvements in certain areas.
Circle have taken on the financial responsibility for the running of the hospital and have targets in terms of the amount of time nurses spend with patients, the number of times patients have to travel to the hospital and the safety of it's procedures.
One of the ways in which the company hope to solve the debt problems is by attracting more patients to the hospital. This will start with a "rigourous plan of improvement" to care and food quality, according to regional NHS director Dr Stephen Dunn. "Patients constantly go to hospitals distant from their homes because of better food", he opined, "but if that doesn't work, then Circle are more than willing to go and seek patients using squads of hired goons to generate patients on the hospital's own doorstep".
Critics of the move have suggested that should Circle run into financial difficulties, the government would have to step in and bail out the hospital and that this is yet another cynical, thinly-veiled attempt by a right-wing government to socialise debt and privatise profit for the government's chums in business, to which a Circle executive responded "oh look, a chaffinch. You don't normally see them round here, and certainly not at this time of year".
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