NHS Agrees To Pay Virgin Health Care After It Loses Community Healthcare Contracts

Published on: 14 Dec, 2017
Updated on: 14 Dec, 2017

Virgin Health Care has settled out of court with Guildford and Waverley Clinical Commisioning Group (CCG), part of the NHS, after legal action which followed Virgin’s failure to re-secure contracts for proving community services for six Surrey CCGs.

The settlement will, it is believed, result in payments, using NHS funds, to Virgin Care. One CCG, (Surrey Downs) published board papers, subsequently withdrawn, which stated their liability as £328,000. This may include legal costs.

According to a Daily Telegraph report, Virgin threatened to sue healthcare commissioners because it claimed: “…there were “serious flaws in the procurement process” which had left it “so concerned” that it had launched the proceedings.

But in a joint statement issued after the settlement was agreed by Virgin Health Care and the Surrey CCGs they said: “The parties are pleased to confirm that an agreed resolution on the litigation concerning the Surrey Children’s procurement has been reached to a satisfactory conclusion for all parties with detailed terms confidential to the parties.”

A spokesperson for Guildford and Waverley CCG said she could not comment further on the case because of the terms of the settlement. The Royal Surrey County Hospital and Cllr Iseult Roche (Con, Worplesdon), the lead councillor for health, also declined to comment.

At the start of 2016 Virgin Care held the contracts for both Adult and Children Community Services in Guildford and Waverley. At the start of 2017, Virgin lost out in the award of the children’s £82 million contract renewal covering: health visitors, school nurses and speech and occupational therapy for children, in favour of a partnership of NHS organisations and a social enterprise.

In November 2017 Guildford and Waverley NHS GPs via their federation, Procare Health, working alongside our local NHS hospital, The Royal Surrey County Hospital, were successful in beating Virgin for the adult community contract to start in April 2018.

Brian Creese a spokesman for Guildford Labour, said in a press release: “The Health & Social Care Act passed by the coalition government in 2013 led the way for the NHS to be privatised by stealth. In Surrey we have seen the way in which Virgin Care has slowly acquired over 20 NHS contracts, taking NHS money to make a profit.

“Part of the appeal for the commissioners [in selecting the in-house NHS consortium] must have been the opportunity to re-establish our cherished district nurses and community matrons back into the heart of general practice, to be able to better wrap the primary care service around the patients that need it.

“This success for the public sector has been celebrated by many, but it now appears that Virgin is still making money from the NHS, despite losing these bids, by threatening to sue the commissioners because the contract did not go their way.

“Each £1 of this money is £1 removed from our local health economy. Each £1 is money not available to be spent on innovation and improving healthcare for us all. It’s a free-market where the market now subsidises wealthy private companies over local NHS organisations, whilst forcing those local NHS organisations close to extinction.

“We need to seriously question this entire broken system and bring back a fully integrated NHS that is not broken up for profit, and subjected to legal action by aggressive multinational companies.”