NHS reform myths

Richard Blogger of the torylies blog has a good site addressing some of the 'myths' around the 'reform' of the NHS, here's an excerpt from Myth 10: Private providers will just cherry-pick the easiest cases, undercutting the NHS:

The Government's Claim:

The less complex the procedure, the less someone – including in the private sector – will be paid. Unlike Labour, we will not rig the market in favour of the private sector.

The Rebuttal

 

"The less complex the procedure, the less someone – including in the private sector – will be paid"

This shows a stunning lack of understanding about how Payment by Results works. Each procedure, for example, cataract removal, is paid at the same rate (the tariff). However, not every patient is the same. There will be some cases that are more difficult than others even though they are covered by the same tariff. There is plenty of evidence where this has happened with last government's Independent Sector Treatment Centre programme (ISTC). 

...

The problem with the ISTC programme is that the provider was paid for referral, not for treatment. The government says that providers will be paid for treatment, but they do not say that once referred the provider must treat the patient, since there is no such provision in the Health Bill it means that once a private hospital receives a more complicated case they may refer the patient back to the NHS. The NHS has a responsibility to treat patients, private providers will never have this responsibility because they know that the NHS is always there for the more difficult cases.

...

This means that if the private providers are cherry picking we will not know about it because such data will be "commercially confidential". There is nothing in the Health Bill to prevent this, indeed, the Health Bill enables private providers to be even more secretive and apply "commercially confidentiality" clauses to their contracts with the NHS.

The Health Bill will not prevent private providers cherry picking because it does not mandate that once referred the provider must treat the patient. The Health Bill also strengthens the use of commercially confidentiality and so the public will not know whether the private sector are cherry-picking.