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Independent Sector Treatment Centres

I rise not as a Committee member but as the representative of a constituency that has an independent sector treatment centre. The centre is run by Capio UK, which is a Swedish company. Let me say from the outset that I am not unsympathetic to the concept of using independent centres to treat NHS patients; it is hardly an innovation—the NHS has commissioned waiting-list initiative cases from private providers for many years. There has perhaps been a policy move, however, in that the centres have institutionalised the practice of NHS patients being treated in private units at NHS expense by providing dedicated units for that purpose. I spoke to Capio before the centre opened, when the concept was still at the design stage, and I visited the centre in the week of opening on 3 February 2006. It has 24 beds, six of which are in individual rooms, with nine in double rooms. It provides a mix of elective treatments in orthopaedic and general surgery, and has five consultation and examination rooms for out-patients, together with an in-house laboratory, and X-ray and ultrasound facilities. All of the patients come under the care of consultants from the York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which provides reassurance about standards and helps to ensure satisfactory integration between the services provided at the centre and those provided through the trust. However, that drives a coach and horses through the concept of contestability. If the purpose of setting up independently owned, run and managed treatment centres to operate in competition with NHS trusts is to determine whether a different pattern of management or different ways of working can produce either better quality of care or more cost-effective care, that is unlikely to occur if the same doctors provide the same range of treatments in both places.