UK Health Industry News
Bupa launches surprise auction of UK hospitals
BUPA has put all its UK hospitals up for sale.
The company is Britain’s largest private healthcare group. It runs 26 hospitals in the UK which last year looked after 800,000 patients, 5% of which were NHS cases.
The hospitals could fetch £1.2 billion or more, with a long list of potential buyers. Bupa has appointed the investment bank Citigroup to handle the sale. Private-equity groups such as Blackstone and Cinven are likely to show an interest, as well as Australia’s Macquarie bank and the French private health group, Générale de Santé. Several big Middle East and Asian investors are also expected to be in the hunt.
BUPA has confirmed it is in preliminary discussions with potential hospital purchasers but stresses it is not considering the sale of any other part of the group. It is not known whether a buyer would be able to continue to use the Bupa brand, or whether Bupa would sever its links entirely.
One suggestion is that proceeds from the hospital sale could be used for a big expansion into care homes - Bupa has 298 in the UK, with 18,500 residents. Another use would be for overseas expansion. Bupa now has operations in Australia, America, Scandinavia and the Far East, and has 8.1m customers worldwide.
Bupa has 4m customers in the UK
Most people assume that the company is a mutual, but that is not the case. It is actually a company limited by guarantee. Bupa has no shareholders, and oversight is provided by a group of 100 eminent “members” who have no direct economic interest in the group. Surpluses are invested back into the business. Private-equity buyers have recently made approaches that would value the entire group at more than £5 billion. The offers were rejected.
Private medical insurance: News update: April 2007
NHS Cutbacks ‘cost 22,300 jobs’
More than 22,300 NHS posts have been lost in the last 18 months because of the financial crisis hitting the health service, according to a report from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN).
The report, Our NHS – Today and Tomorrow, claims the government’s insistence that trusts balanced their books last year has led to thousands of jobs disappearing from the health service through redundancies, post deletions and recruitment freezes.
It suggests specialist nurses are bearing the brunt of the financial crisis, as almost 90% said NHS cuts were having an adverse effect on patient care and 19% said they were personally at risk of redundancy.
As a result of the cutbacks, the report suggests there is a loss of specialist services such as those for multiple sclerosis and epilepsy. For example, there are waiting times of up to nine months for some diagnostic and specialist services.
Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the RCN, said: "Our NHS remains caught up in a rip-tide of cuts, rushed reforms and poor workforce planning. This is hitting services, hurting patients, undermining staff morale and threatening the hard-won progress made over recent years."
The Health Insurance Magazine: April 2007.
BUPA in talks to sell hospital business
BUPA, the healthcare provider, is in discussions with potential buyers of its hospital business.
In a statement the company confirmed that it is in talks with a number of parties about a potential sale of BUPA Hospitals, although it stressed that those discussions may or may not lead to a deal being agreed.
BUPA owns 26 hospitals across the UK, after disposing of nine hospitals to Legal & General Ventures in 2005. The sale to the private equity arm of L&G generated £85m for BUPA and formed the basis of a new private hospital group called Classic Hospitals. It is understood that private equity groups are now examining the potential of BUPA’s remaining 26 hospitals.
It has been reported that any income derived from a sale of the remaining hospitals could be used to bolster the group’s care home business or its activities overseas.
BUPA said that its board was undertaking a review “to establish whether, given the significant changes in the UK healthcare economy and in particular the increasing role the private sector is playing in that market, there may be benefits for the customers and other stakeholders of BUPA Hospitals and the BUPA Group in a sale of BUPA Hospitals.”
BUPA stressed that any discussions with potential purchasers of BUPA Hospitals did not indicate that it was considering selling the BUPA group as a whole.
Recent speculation has suggested that private equity has shown an interest in making a £5bn bid for the entire BUPA organisation.
But in a statement BUPA said: “The Board is not considering the sale of any other part of the BUPA Group or a change
The Health Insurance Magazine: 11 April 2007
New hospital forced to close entire floor
South London's Lewisham Hospital has been forced to leave an entire floor of its new Riverside building empty because of cutbacks brought in to tackle the NHS deficit.
The fourth floor of the £69 million hospital was supposed to provide100 beds for elderly and post-operative patients but it has been closed since the hospital opened in November 2006.
Lewisham health chiefs are considering other uses for the space and have not ruled renting it to a private healthcare provider.
Sunday Express, 11 February, 2007
Hospital bug deaths on the rise
The number of deaths linked to the hospital bug Clostridium Difficile (CD) has outstripped those due to MRSA, latest figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show that between 2001 and 2005 MRSA was mentioned on one in every 500 death certificates in England and Wales. For CD it was one in every 250. This represents a rise in 69% from 2004 to 2005 in the incidence of CD, while in the same period MRSA increased by 39%.
Health Minister Lord Hunt said: "It is a major challenge for the NHS and a top priority for government."
Head of health at Unison, Karen Jennings, said: "These shocking figures show that MRSA and CD have a deadly grip on our NHS. Dirt is not cheap.
"No one wants to be treated in a dirty hospital but sadly the culture of cleaning was sold off at the same time as compulsory competitive tendering was brought in.
"It's time for hospitals to set safe minimum staffing levels for their cleaning services - patients and staff deserve nothing less."
A spokesperson for the Patients Association said: "Our worry is that these figures will continue to rise as other priorities take precedence
"The government promised to make infection control one of its top priorities. Yet its own announcement to further reduce waiting times by 'round the clock operations' will inevitably harm these efforts," she said.
The Health Insurance Magazine: February 2007
AXA PPP buys Legal & General’s PMI business
Legal & General has sold its private medical insurance (PMI) business to AXA PPP healthcare, Health Insurance can reveal.
L&G said that a review of its general insurance business had shown that growth in healthcare had “not kept pace” with its “core household business”.
The insurer has been providing PMI for more than 10 years and last summer made a bid to grow the individual and SME market with the launch of a new plan for sale by intermediaries called HealthCare Choices. Since then it has chased market share with an aggressive pricing strategy.
However, a spokesman for L&G confirmed that the insurer will close to new PMI business at the end of this month. It will process any new applications received between now and then until the end of March. Existing policies will cease to be renewed from July 2 and be transferred to AXA PPP.
A spokesman for AXA PPP said that “in the vast majority of cases” this will enable existing L&G policyholders to be covered on an AXA PPP plan with “comparable benefits” to those of their L&G plan.
“In cases where this is not possible, customers will be offered the nearest equivalent AXA PPP healthcare plan,” he said. “In all cases this will happen with continuation of their existing personal underwriting terms.”
That means that AXA PPP will not be asking L&G customers to provide it with new medical history information or to be newly underwritten.
The AXA PPP spokesman continued: “Where L&G business has been introduced by an intermediary, we will also be contacting the intermediary to inform them of our agreement with L&G and with details of how L&G customers can maintain their cover.”
The deal enables AXA PPP, Britain’s second largest medical insurer, to eat into the market share of BUPA, the country’s largest.
L&G, meanwhile, will continue to focus on its household business. It is currently involved in one in nine mortgage transactions in Britain. It is unlikely that the sale of the PMI book will have an impact on its other employee benefits businesses, a spokesman added.
Staff at L&G have been informed of the sale, although a spokesman declined to confirm if there would be any job losses as a result of it.
The Health Insurance Magazine: 16 February 2007
NHS ops delayed due to debt
Hospitals across London are being forced to delay routine operations because of financial problems facing primary care trusts (PCTs).
Some patients who could have expected to have had surgery within weeks now have to wait until April, the next financial year in order to limit operations and balance their books.
James Johnson, chairman of the British Medical Association, said the trend was happening “across the country”, while the “worst is yet to come.”
He added: “It’s an absolutely nonsensical situation. Doctors and nurses are available to treat patients, but they can’t get on with it because PCTs are under pressure to balance the books. The market system where care is bought and sold was supposed to increase efficiency, but it seems to be making things worse. It’s clearly not in patients’ interests that there are incentives for PCTs to delay operations.”
Johnson also noted that “it makes no sense at all financially” as the hospital still has to pay its staff, but does not get the money from the PCT. “All that happens is that debts are passed from one part of the NHS to another,” he said.
The Health Insurance Magazine: 16 February 2007
GPs go private
Almost a third of GPs would prefer to be treated privately rather than relying on the NHS, a survey has revealed.
The poll of 1,723 doctors found that 28% of GPs had private medical insurance, compared to 22% of all doctors, including consultants.
More than 60% of all respondents to the survey, carried out by Hospital Doctor magazine and Medix, said they were happy to be treated on the NHS.
But Dr David Costain, medical director at AXA PPP healthcare, said the results of the survey were “interesting” because they showed that in spite of the fact that GPs “know how to get the best of what the NHS has to offer”, a third of family doctors would rather be treated privately.
However, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary Norman Lamb said: “The fact that doctors in such great numbers are taking out insurance to sidestep waiting times simply demonstrates that we have got a long way to go.
“We supported the record investment in the NHS but the government has not used it effectively enough.”
Source: The Health Insurance Magazine: February 2007.
Brits turn to drink!
The number of people who drink alcohol when they feel stressed has risen in the last three years, research has revealed.
According to a study carried out by the counselling service the Samaritans, and Medicash, the cash plan provider, almost a third of people turn to alcohol when stressed – up from 2003 when the figure was just 23%.
The survey shows that women are just as stressed out as men and the biggest cause of stress for men and women is money – at 50% for men and 52% for women – with work second at 45% for men and 32% for women.
The findings of the Samaritans’ Stressed Out Survey also found that in Northern Ireland almost half (45%) said they drink to relieve stress. Sixty-eight per cent of people said they are irritable through stress while 56% said their sleep patterns are disturbed.
However, the number of people who do absolutely “nothing at all” about their stress has doubled since 2003. Twenty-nine per cent said they “just do nothing and carry on with it”, compared to 15% in 2003.
Peter Lauris, sales and marketing director at Medicash, said: “It recently came out that just under one third of all working days lost in the UK are due to stress and more days now are taken off with stress than musculoskeletal disorders.
“The worrying thing is that if people turn to drink to deal with stress even more time will be taken off – recent research showed that up to 73% of people in some regions have been tempted to take a day off because of a hangover,” he said, adding that employers should put procedures in place to tackle stress.
Source: The Health Insurance Magazine; February 2007
NHS likely to miss MRSA targets!
The NHS is not on course to hit its MRSA targets, and there is some doubt about whether it is in fact achievable, a leaked government memo says.
In November 2004, then Health Secretary John Reid pledged MRSA bloodstream infection rates would be halved by April 2008. But the memo, sent by the Department of Health's director of health protection Liz Woodeson in October, said it would only be cut by a third by then.
News of the memo – seen by Health Service Journal – comes after it emerged that another bug, Clostridium difficile, has overtaken MRSA and has reached endemic level in hospitals. Virtually all trusts have reported cases of the bug, and figures show that 2004 saw twice as many deaths from the infection as were related to MRSA.
"It is time that infection control became a top priority in the NHS rather than just another item on a long shopping list of targets. Infection control works when wards can be closed quickly in case of infection, but all too often such decisions are not taken because hospital staff fear that they will miss other government imposed targets," said Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat health spokesman.
Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, agreed: "NHS deficits are forcing trusts to reduce staff and cut services, so it comes as no surprise that priorities such as MRSA have been allowed to slip."
In response Health Minister Andy Burnham said: "The decision that we took after the memo that was prepared for us was that we will stay the course, that we will hold for the target, that there's no complacency."
Health Insurance Magazine: January 2007
SME medical insurance guide launched
Defaqto, the financial research company, has published a guide to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) understand the area of protecting and promoting employee health.
An Investment not an Expense: Health Insurance Solutions for Small and Medium Enterprises has been designed to help HR and personnel managers understand how health cover and the benefits offered can impact positively on their firm’s bottom line. Defaqto’s guide looks at group private medical insurance and group hospital cash plans. It explains the composition of each type of cover and how understanding the varying options available can help ensure the correct policy type is selected for the individual organisation.
Nick Telfer, head of life and protection at Defaqto, said he wrote the report as he recognised that health cover can be a confusing area for SMEs.
“We wanted to help busy managers in smaller companies review their approach to employee health cover. This guide will enable employers without this type of cover to appreciate the real benefits that health insurance can bring to their business,” he added.
Health Insurance Magazine; December 2006.
Average GP now earns more than £100,000 annually!
Average GP earnings rose by 30% during 2004/05, official figures show.
Statistics from the Information Centre for health and social care show that family doctors earned an average £106,000 during the first year of their new contract.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said doctors had "well and truly earned" their rise. But politicians and NHS bosses expressed concern that so much of the new money earmarked as part of a new GP contract had apparently gone on pay, rather than on investment in services.
The new GP contract, which was designed to give family doctors additional funds to invest in improving and developing services to patients, included incentives to reward GPs and their practice teams for driving up the quality of patient care.
According to the Information Centre for health and social care, GPs who worked in dispensing practices, which have a pharmacy attached, earned an average of £128,000 after expenses – a rise of 31%. Non-dispensing GPs earned an average of £102,000 after expenses – 30% more than in 2003/04.
A large proportion of GPs' earnings are now linked to the quality of care they provide, with payments made for the provision of extra services, such as contraception, child health and chronic disease clinics.
The report looked at income from both NHS and private sources for just under 18,000 family doctors. It shows that average total earnings for GPs was £236,000.
Source: The Health Insurance Magazine; December 2006.
NHS Complaints Grow!
Almost 100,000 complaints were received by frontline NHS trusts in England during 2005/06.
Statistics released by The Information Centre for Health and Social Care reveal that in 2005/06 a total of 95,047 complaints were made. This compares with 90,413 complaints made during the previous 12 months.
However, there were just over 36,000 complaints about all aspects of clinical care. Many of the complaints (11,500) were about delays and cancellations of outpatient appointments and nearly 11,500 regarding the attitude of staff. The number of complaints about family health services, such as GPs and general dental practitioners, has remained level at around 43,000 for the past three years.
The Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was the most complained-about trust, notching up 698 complaints, while the South Cambridgeshire Primary Care Trust received just six complaints.
(Extracted from: The Health Insurance Magazine November 2006)
Further NHS Job Cuts on the Way.
Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary Steve Webb MP said: “This is a further symptom of an NHS under pressure from weekly job cuts and service reductions. Front line staff need support to deliver a quality service, rather than the Government’s constant reorganisation.”
NHS chief executive David Nicholson has admitted that there will be further compulsory redundancies in the NHS before the end of the year.
Already in 2006, 903 compulsory redundancies have been announced, 80% of which were management and administrative staff and 20% clinical staff.
The redundancies are part of a restructuring to reroute £250m from backroom work to frontline healthcare, particularly for the areas of cancer care, palliative care and some preventative services.
It is expected that more redundancies will be announced as the NHS continues its management restructuring.
(Extracted from: The Health Insurance Magazine November 2006)
BUPA sets up Specialist Hospital Network 19 th August 2005
BUPA has launched a network of specialist hospitals to tackle gynaecological cancers.
Following a detailed assessment of hospitals around the country providing care for women with cancer of the reproduction system. As a result 28 hospitals have achieved accreditation as BUPA hospitals around the country for gynaecological cancers. These centres have been assessed against clinical quality criteria and are staffed by teams of clinicians with expertise in treating gynaecological cancers.
A BUPA spokesperson said "Establishing this network of approved hospitals is a hugely important step".
"They provide a co-ordinated specialist approach to help tackle these distressing conditions".
Cancer victim sends £9,000 surgery bill to health trust.
"If I'd waited for my operation on the NHS, I'd be dead now!
The Daily Express on 16 th March 2005 reported that a Mr John Beacock who was forced to pay for life-saving surgery because he refused to wait 6-months for treatment is demanding that the NHS refunds the £9,000 bill.
Mr Beacock of Old Basing, near Basingstok was commended as "very wise" by his consultant after the cancer was found to be worse than NHS scans first revealed and Mr Beacock took action to save his life.
The 63-year old grandfather who took out a loan and dipped into his savings has received backing from his GP and MP in pressing the NHS for a refund.
The alternative was to wait for 6-months on the NHS - a wait he found unacceptable.
"I have paid my National Insurance contributions for 48-years and I should have had better service than this. The NHS failed me when I needed it'".
Basingstoke MP Andrew Hunter commented "I regard the waiting time as unacceptable".
Scotland on Sunday
Health Crisis: 1,000 Scots desert NHS every week
Essential Healthcare's Brian Mulreany made front page news on Scotland on Sunday after it was disclosed that 60% rise in numbers taking out private cover as ministers fail over waiting lists. In a hard hitting article Murdo MacLeod Scotland on Sunday's political correspondent disclosed that more than 1,000 Scots are quitting the NHS, and the rate is accelerating despite billions of pounds of extra investment.
The article also disclosed that for the first time ever, English treatment rates have overtaken Scotland for the first time. It was revealed that Scots are twice as likely to be stuck on an outpatient waiting list as people in England . As a result, soaring numbers of Scots who would have been loyal to the NHS are voting with their feet.
