Centre for Health and the Public Interest

Last updated
Centre for Health and the Public Interest
Founded2012
ServicesIndependent think-tank
Key people
Director
David Rowland
Trustees
Prof Colin Leys
Prof David McCoy
Dr Guddi Singh
Dr Jonathon Tomlinson
Website chpi.org.uk

The Centre for Health and the Public Interest (CHPI) is a London think tank founded in 2012 to defend "the founding principles of the NHS". It is a registered charity. [1]

Professor Colin Leys was involved in its foundation.

Research

It has produced several reports on the Private finance initiative in the English NHS. It said in 2017 that PFI companies had made pre-tax profits of £831m in the past six years which could have been spent on patient care. [2] In 2022 it pointed out that expenditure on staff, equipment and other capital projects can be cut by an NHS trust, but not their PFI payments. [3] It warned councillors in Newham that NHS sustainability and transformation plans were untested. [4] Its scrutiny of the role of markets and competition in the NHS found that information about quality and safety in private hospitals was not available in the same way as with NHS providers so it was not possible to compare the two. [5] Only seven contracts with private providers had been terminated by clinical commissioning groups due to failings, though 16% of their care budget is spent in the private sector and there are some 15,000 contracts with private providers. [6]

It has also reported on Social care in England [7] It claims that "the quality of care in adult social care has declined over the past two decades as a result of privatisation". [8] The CHPI estimates that £1.5bn annually, (that is 10% of the care home industry's £15bn income), "leaks" and often enriches owners or other firms linked closely to owners. The £1.5bn is shown as rent, profit, directors' fees and debt repayments, instead of going to the care of residents. It is the same amount of money the government promised to give to social care, because of worries about the large cuts to the social care since 2010 when austerity started. The CHPI stated, "It's very difficult to find out where the £15bn ends up." Vivek Kotecha, CHPI research manager who did the above research stated, "Some of the largest care home businesses are extracting a lot of profit disguised as rent and loan repayment costs. This makes it hard for local authorities and individuals to know how much extra funding the industry actually needs and how financially sustainable it really is." The CHPI cautioned that a large increase in public funds for the sector could just produce bigger profits for operators, since many firms lack financial transparency. [9]

In July 2019 it produced a study on Conflicts of Interest between the NHS and the Private Hospital sector in England. It found that more than 600 NHS doctors owned either shares or equipment or both in the private hospitals to which they referred patients. Most of the shareholding was in HCA Healthcare. [10]

In October 2019 it produced an analysis of expenditure on private providers of NHS services in England. It concluded that rather than the 7% of NHS expenditure which the government say was spent in this way in 2018-9, a fairer analysis would produce a figure of 26% – an increase of 20% over the previous year. [11]

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. ↑ "About". CHPI. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  2. ↑ "NHS 'leaking millions' in PFI contracts". BBC News. 30 August 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  3. ↑ "NHS hospital trusts paying hundreds of millions in interest to private firms". Guardian. 25 October 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  4. ↑ "Risks of Newham healthcare proposals discussed". Newham Recorder. 9 March 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  5. ↑ "Private hospitals 'must provide more safety data'". BBC News. 20 August 2014. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  6. ↑ "Report finds that companies are not being properly assessed for their quality of care". Independent. 18 April 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  7. ↑ "No party offers a real solution for social care crisis, says think-tank". Public Finance. 2 June 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  8. ↑ "ALL adult social care services could be PRIVATISED in radical proposals". Liverpool Echo. 9 July 2017. Retrieved 30 August 2017.
  9. ↑ Care home operators accused of extracting 'disguised' profits The Guardian
  10. ↑ "A conflict of interests? NHS campaigner questions health chiefs over contract". Brighton and Hove News. 9 August 2019. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  11. ↑ Rowland, David (1 October 2019). "Flawed data? Why NHS spending on the independent sector may actually be much more than 7%". British Politics and Policy. Retrieved 3 October 2019.
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