UNISON has today (Monday) strongly condemned the government’s decision to award primary care support services – one of the largest NHS contracts worth £1bn over ten years – to outsourcing giant Capita.
The move will see millions of patients’ medical records handled outside the NHS. This is likely to mean the closure of several regional NHS England, hundreds of job losses and up to one quarter of the entire NHS England workforce moved across to Capita.
Primary care support services include the management of medical records, prescription payments and the administrative and financial support to GPs, dentists, opticians and pharmacists. They also include admin services for recall and results letters for breast and cervical cancer screenings.
UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis said: “Confidential medical records should be handled safely and certainly not given to a profit making company. This move is wrong on so many levels and the consequences for people’s health if something goes wrong could be irreversible.
“This government claims it is not privatising the NHS but transferring nearly a quarter of the workforce of NHS England to a massive international company puts the lie to that claim.
“It is a disgrace that such a major change in the way the NHS is administered of the NHS was carried out in secret behind closed doors. It is reckless and wrong that the government allowed this to happen without any public scrutiny. It is now up to ministers to reassure the public that their medical records remain safe.”
Notes to editors
The contract is one of the biggest ever put out to tender by the health service and US giant arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin had earlier expressed an interest. Other interested bidders included KPMG, Serco and G4S.
NHS commissioning support units, which specialise in back office support services for NHS commissioners were not able to bid for the contract.