Taxpayers are paying five per cent more per year for hospitals built under Labour’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) because the debts are linked to inflation.Currently the combined debt for some 800 PFI projects, including 103 PFI hospitals in England, stands at about £300 billion, according to makers of the programme.

When a BBC Panorama programme contacted 85 hospital trusts with PFI deals, it found 80 of them said they were having to make increased payments due to inflation.

When most of the deals were set up, inflation was low and the outlook was for that to continue well into the future.

Most trusts decided not to protect their debts from rising inflation, against the advice of the Treasury.

By contrast, the companies building the hospitals insured themselves against losses due to inflation.

The PFI deals, under which companies build hospitals to be leased back by the NHS, typically run for 30 years.

Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP who now chairs the Public Accounts Committee, admitted to the programme: “We should have been much more transparent about the costs. I think we got the balance wrong.”

Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the committee, said he thought taxpayers were being “ripped off”.

A spokesman for the Treasury said that protecting PFI debts against inflation was “not mandatory … because it is subject to individual authorities undertaking their own project assessments”.

He added said: “The Government has consistently expressed concerns about the misuse and costliness of PFI. That is why, less than two weeks ago, the Government launched a fundamental review of the PFI model, which will see the end of PFI as we know it.”

Controversial reforms to the NHS have avoided a potentially “fatal” delay in the House of Lords, to the relief of ministers.Amid deep concern in the medical profession and among many members of the public, some peers had tried to have the Health and Social Care Bill thrown out or subjected to detailed scrutiny that would have ruined the Government’s timetable.

It is feared by opponents that the wording of the legislation will remove the Secretary of State’s duty to provide healthcare for all, while plans to widen competition will see the back-door privatisation of the NHS.

But following two days of debate by 100 members of the upper house, and pressure applied by ministers and whips to Tories and Lib Dems, attempts to delay or thrown out the Bill were defeated comfortably in the biggest turnouts seen in the Lords for more than a decade.

A motion by Lord Owen, a former health minister and SDP leader, to let a special committee spend until Christmas studying the constitutional impact of the reforms was rejected by a margin of 330 to 262.

Labour’s Lord Rea had wanted the second reading to be refused altogether but this proposal was lost by 354 votes to 220.

Baroness Williams of Crosby, the Lib Dem grandee who had been among the first to raise fears over the Bill, abstained on the critical Lord Owen vote and went with the Government on the Lord Rea motion.

The results means the Bill, which seeks to remove two tiers of NHS management and give more power to GPs and patients, will now be considered line-by-line in committee stage in the Lords and remains on track to receive Royal Assent by next summer.

It has already survived a rebellion by Lib Dem activists in the spring and an unprecedented “pause” in the parliamentary proceedings for doctors’ concerns to be heard, which led to competition plans being watered down.

But even the Government accepts that more changes will be made to contentious areas.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The vote today moves us one step closer to delivering a world-class health service that puts patients at its heart and hands more power to health professionals. We now look forward to working with the Lords to scrutinise the Bill during Committee Stage to improve our plans further.”

Labour said it would continue to call for “drastic changes”.

The plans had been criticised in the debate by well-known figures including Lord Winston, the fertility pioneer, who described the Bill as “unnecessary and, I’m afraid to say, irresponsible”.

After the vote Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of BMA Council, said: “It remains the BMA position that the Health and Social Care Bill should be withdrawn, or if not that it should be substantially amended, and we will continue to raise our concerns at every available opportunity as the Bill progresses through the House of Lords.

“The BMA continues to have many areas of concern, including the need for assurance that increasing patients’ choice of provider for specific elements of their care won’t be given priority over the development of integrated services and fair access.

“We also need to see an explicit provision that the Secretary of State will retain ultimate responsibility for the provision of comprehensive health services.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-reform-Bill-survives-fatal-Lords-vote

Dismantling Labour’s disastrous £12 billion NHS IT programme may cost taxpayers more than keeping it going.Ministers announced on Thursday that they will speed up the scrapping of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT)  after a review concluded “there can be no confidence that the programme has delivered or can be delivered as originally conceived”.

It confirmed earlier reports that the central part of the scheme, allowing NHS staff across England to access any patient’s details, was unworkable while costs had increases and deadlines were missed.

The governance board of the programme will now be scrapped, and local trusts will be given the freedom to develop their own versions of the electronic care record rather than having the rules dictated by Whitehall. A new Cabinet Office oversight committee will monitor future IT investment to ensure money is not wasted.

But many trusts across England have large contracts with private suppliers to supply their care record systems, and their cancellation could leave taxpayers even more out of pocket.

The Department of Health’s own chief information officer, Christine Connelly, told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee in May that a £3bn deal with CSC to deliver systems in the north, midlands and east of England would cost more to get out of than to keep going.

She said: “Potentially, if you ask me about the absolute maximum, we could be exposed to a higher cost than the cost to complete the contract as it stands today.”

A decision will be made on the future of the contract later in the autumn.

However the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority said that some parts of the £12.7bn programme had worked and would be retained, including the NHSmail email system and the Choose and Book process of arranging hospital referrals.

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said: “Labour’s NHS IT Programme let down the NHS and wasted taxpayers’ money by imposing a top-down IT system on the local NHS, which didn’t fit their needs.

“We will be moving to an innovative new system driven by local decision-making. This is the only way to make sure we get value for money from IT systems that better meet the needs of a modernised NHS.”

Roger Goss, co-director of the pressure group Patient Concern said: “Thank goodness politicians have decided to stop money being poured into a huge bottomless pit. Now we must pray that they don’t sanction pouring it into endless incompatible regional pits.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Dismantling-NHS-computer-scheme-could-cost-more-money

Patient care is under threat at more than 60 NHS hospitals which are “on the brink of financial collapse” because of costly private finance initiative schemes the Health Secretary warns.Andrew Lansley says he has been contacted by 22 health service trusts which claim their “clinical and financial stability” is being undermined by the costs of the contracts, which the Labour government used extensively to fund public sector projects.

The trusts in jeopardy include Barts and the London, Oxford Radcliffe, North Bristol, St Helens and Knowsley, and Portsmouth.

Between them the trusts run more than 60 hospitals which care for 12 million patients.

There is already evidence that waiting lists for non–urgent operations have begun to rise as hospitals delay treatment to save money. Adding to this are growing fears over the impact of the financial crisis on care this winter.

Under the PFI deals, a private contractor builds a hospital or school. It owns the building for up to 35 years, and during this period the public sector must pay interest and repay the cost of construction, as well as paying the contractor to maintain the building.

However, the total cost of the deals is often far more than the value of the assets. As a result, Mr Lansley says, the 22 trusts “cannot afford” to pay for their schemes, which in total are worth more than £5.4billion, because the required payments have risen sharply in the wake of the recession.

Mr Lansley said: “Over the last year, we’ve been working to expose the mess Labour left us with, and the truth is that some hospitals have been landed with PFI deals they simply cannot afford.

“Like the economy, Labour has brought some parts of the NHS to the brink of financial collapse. Tough solutions may be needed for these problems, but we’ll help the NHS overcome them. We will not make the sick pay for Labour’s debt crisis.”

He said hospitals would not be allowed to collapse financially.

“There are many hospitals that are well run, do not have a legacy of debt and do have projects which are perfectly sustainable. My point is that we have looked since the election and are working together with individual trusts to arrive at a place where they are financially, and in terms of the quality of their services, sustainable for the future. We can only do that if we work closely with them,” he said.

“This is about making very clear that we are not only working on unsustainable PFIs, but also working with legacy debt that the NHS has been left with, working on the IT programmes which were on an unsustainable scale of contractual commitments that didn’t meet the need of the NHS’s customers.

“Across the board, we have to tackle Labour’s legacy of poor value formoney and debt.”

Over the next few weeks, Department of Health officials and executives at the 22 trusts will develop detailed plans for dealing with the crisis. Their proposals are expected to include significant cost–cutting and the renegotiation of PFI contracts.

Money will also be moved from NHS trusts that are in better financial shape to cover the debt costs at those that are struggling. However, officials are braced for the need to use Whitehall funds to bail out some hospitals.

Among the trusts which have contacted Mr Lansley to inform him of their severe financial problems are several London institutions, including South London Healthcare, Barking, Havering and Redbridge, and North Middlesex.

Outside the capital, other trusts to have approached the health department include Wye Valley, Worcester Acute Hospitals, Mid Yorkshire, and Walsall.

After the general election last year, Mr Lansley ordered officials to establish why some NHS hospitals were under–performing. The health department is assessing the financial position of every hospital. It is understood that the PFI costs have emerged as a leading factor in poor patient care in some areas.

The Health Secretary decided to disclose the list of hospitals in difficulty and is expected to announce the rescue plans for each trust next month.

Taxpayers are having to pay more than £200 billion for schools, hospitals and other projects whose capital value is little more than £50 billion.

In one example, a hospital in Bromley, south east London, will ultimately cost the NHS £1.2 billion, more than 10 times what it is worth. Another hospital was charged £52,000 for maintenance that cost £750. The annual cost of the schemes is almost £400 for each household.

The public payments for PFI deals are typically linked to inflation and therefore the cost to taxpayers has increased by up to a third since the beginning of the credit crisis, according to the National Audit Office. Last month, MPs on the Treasury select committee effectively called for a moratorium on new PFI projects, which it said were “like a drug” as the costs were not apparent at the outset.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, has tightened the rules on the deals.

Earlier this year, John Healey, the shadow health secretary, admitted in an interview that Labour ministers had failed when negotiating the multi–million pound schemes for hospitals.

“There is definitely a case for saying we were poor at PFI, poor at negotiating PFI contracts at the outset,” he said.

Companies who run PFI schemes boast profit margins of up to 71 per cent on the projects, but have come under growing pressure from MPs and ministers to return some of their “windfall profits”.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-hospitals-crippled-by-PFI-scheme

Parts of England are facing big midwife shortages putting mothers and babies at risk midwives have warned.The Royal College of Midwives says a 22% rise in births over 20 years has led to shortfalls across England, but some areas are worse than others – it highlights the East Midlands and East.

The RCM wants 4,700 more midwives and says the prime minister has backed away from a pledge to raise numbers.

The Department of Health said record numbers of midwives were now being trained.

Midwives say births are becoming increasingly complex because of growing numbers of obese and older mothers-to-be, who often need extra support.

The Royal College of Midwives says the extra 4,700 midwives are needed across England to keep pace with the added pressures.

And it says a new analysis of midwife numbers across England reveals big variations – with limited shortages in some areas and serious shortfalls in others.

The calculations were done by measuring the number of midwives in an area against the number of babies born there. The RCM estimates that one midwife is needed for every 28 hospital births and 35 births in a midwife-led unit or at home.

The North East and North West of England had a shortfall of less than 10%.

But according to the figures, the East Midlands and East of England need 41% more midwives, and the South East is also more than a third short of staff.

The college says the disparity is down to different levels of investment in different areas; women living in places with bigger shortfalls are at risk of having less choice over how and where they give birth.

It says Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have midwife shortages at the moment.

“This is a real problem in England,” said Cathy Warwick, RCM General Secretary. “We believe women should have the same choice over giving birth wherever they live. Once you get to really critical shortfalls, maternity services won’t be safe.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by the head of midwifery at Wansbeck hospital in Northumberland, where they say they have enough staff to offer high-quality care.

Janice McNichol has delivered more than 1,000 babies in her career, and prides herself on making sure every mother has a positive experience.

“It’s about safety and quality of care,” she said. “Making sure midwives are there when mum needs them, to answer questions and help her through the process.”

The charity Action against Medical Accidents, AVMA, said the situation in some areas was desperate.

“Having a baby should be the happiest time in a couple’s life, but failure to deal with this problem is all too often turning it into a tragedy,” said AVMA chief executive Pater Walsh.

“Maternity services should be the NHS’s first priority for improving patient safety and having enough trained midwives is an absolute must.”

From:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14859228

England’s NHS hospitals needed at least £200 million in bailouts and loans as they struggled to balance their books while also meeting tough savings targets, according to a spending watchdog.The Audit Commission said nine NHS trusts “failed to achieve financial balance” and many more applied for extra funding from managers and the Government, although overall performance “continues to be good”.

Health bodies spent £289m on redundancy payments but the number of staff employed in hospitals actually rose by almost 8,000.

Dozens were found at fault with the “value for money” they offer and a fifth of all NHS bodies failed to meet their savings targets despite cutting back on staff and the number of patients they treat.

The Audit Commission, the public spending watchdog that is being scrapped, warned that health service providers face even tougher times ahead as savings become harder to find and Government spending increases dry up.

Andy McKeon, managing director for health at the Audit Commission, said: “It is impressive that the NHS overall performed so well financially last year, even if some organisations struggled.

“But there is no room for complacency. Tighter funding, and the need to continue to improve services and implement reforms, will make the next three years much tougher.  NHS organisations will need to make a determined effort to find further recurrent savings while continuing to deliver high quality services.”

The watchdog looked at the 2010-11 accounts for Primary Care Trusts, which pay for treatment; hospitals not including the semi-independent Foundation Trusts; and the regional Strategic Health Authorities.

It found that they were running a £1.5 billion surplus and had actually underspent by £272 millon on the £2.95 billion in capital expenditure they were given by the Department of Health, twice as much as recorded the previous year.

But seven hospitals and two PCTs failed to break even, one fewer than in 2009-10, with the biggest deficit of £41m recorded by South London Healthcare NHS Trust.

At least 16 NHS organisations needed additional financial support from PCTs which is never paid back “thereby obscuring their real financial health”.

Managers gave out £90 million to hospitals, while the Department of Health issued loans totalling £34 million to four hospitals and also gave £76 million to two trusts which did not even have enough money to pay back loans.

Ministers want to cut management costs by 45 per cent at SHAs and PCTs, which are being restructured, and they did let 5,713 people go with average pay-offs of £40,000 each.

But the headcount at hospitals actually rose by 7,616 and only fell by 27 in the 10 SHAs.

The Audit Commission did not find any NHS body’s accounts were not “true and fair”, but it did issue “qualified Value For Money conclusions” for 27 hospitals and 18 PCTs, suggesting they had problems with “financial resilience” or “economy, efficiency and effectiveness”.

The Audit Commission warns next year will be “a more financially challenging year” as there will be no “significant real-terms increase” in the central budget, so trusts will require “determined effort and strong leadership”.

From:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-hospitals-needed-200m-in-bailouts-and-loans

Deprived areas in England will lose out to affluent parts of the country under health spending reforms Labour has claimed- despite repeatedly creating those same postcode lotteries when they were in power.
Changes to funding formulas means poor health rates will be given less consideration when cash is allocated, the party said.

It suggested areas like Manchester and the London borough of Tower Hamlets would lose out to parts of the wealthy south east, such as Surrey and Hampshire.

Labour based the claims on an assessment of funding reforms by public health bodies in Manchester.

But the government has disputed the allegations and claimed Labour’s figures were misleading.

Department of Health officials said primary care budgets in Surrey and Tower Hamlets would go up by a similar amount this year.

The Conservatives claimed every area would have suffered health funding cuts under Labour.

A Conservative party spokesman said: “This is yet another own goal from Labour. If they had won the last election, the NHS would now be being cut by £28 billion across the country. Every area would have seen spending on the NHS cut – as it is in Labour-run Wales.

“This Government is increasing spending on the NHS in real terms over this parliament, and every region of the country will receive more money as a result of this investment.”

Health Direct has repeatedly tracked Labour’s proud boast when it was in power of creating postcode lotteries based on it’s voting constituencies:

Friday, April 13, 2007 Labour voting areas get most PFI NHS cash
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2007/04/labour-voting-areas-get-most-pfi-nhs.html

Wednesday, November 22, 2006 Hewitt defends NHS cash for Labour voting areas
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/11/hewitt-defends-nhs-cash-for-labour.html

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 NHS cuts twice as likely in Tory and Lib Dem areas
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/10/nhs-cuts-twice-as-likely-in-tory-and.html

Monday, September 25, 2006 NHS closures rigged in Labour voting constituencies
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/09/nhs-closures-rigged-in-labour-voting.html

Friday, September 15, 2006 Labour accused over hospital cuts in marginal constituencies
http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2006/09/labour-accused-over-hospital-cuts-in.html

Killer quango NICE- The National Institute for Curbing Expenditure has launched a new online money saving tool – NICE Pathways – that pulls together connected National Health Service guidance into one easy-to-use resource.
For the first time, doctors and commissioners will be able to view and navigate all of NICE’s separate sets of recommendations that relate to a single care pathway in a user-friendly electronic flow chart, as part of a bid to improve the use of its evidence across the nation.

The postnatal care pathway, for example, covers everything from the baby’s first 24 hours up until the first two – eight weeks after birth, providing an immediately accessible overview of all recommended care, as well as links to other products such as the Institute’s Quality Standards and implementation tools.

Launching the new tool at NICE’s 11th annual conference in Birmingham, Gillian Leng, the Institute’s deputy chief executive, said that 18 care pathways have already been completed and that the target is to have 60 on the site by the end of the year.

“NICE Pathways will provide a useful starting point for users new to a topic, while giving specialists confidence that they are up to date with everything NICE has recommended,” she said.

The move comes under a wider plan to improve the digital format of its guidance, which, in future, is likely to remain a crucial element of the new system of value-based pricing for new medicines planned by the government for 2014.

While NICE’s exact role going forward is yet to be defined, in his address to the conference health minister Earl Howe stressed that the Institute – which is to be re-established under primary legislation – will continue to provide independent advice to clinicians, and be a source of advice on cost effectiveness.

From: http://www.pharmatimes.com/NICE_unveils_new_digital_guidance_tool_at_annual_conference

Health Direct notes the use of the phrase “a source of advice on cost effectiveness” as it evokes the memory of labour’s spin- the type of phraseology that labour used to use for cost cutting.

The last Labour government left taxpayers with a £60 billion PFI bill for the scores of new hospitals it built during its 13 years in power, new figures reveal.
They shine a fresh light on the profligacy of the party’s use of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes.

Labour ministers only paid £5 billion of the £65 billion “spent” on building more than 100 hospitals between 1997 and 2010.

The rest of the money, some £60 billion, must still be repaid by the taxpayer – with some of the gigantic debt lasting for more than 30 years.

The highest profile case concerns Barts and the London NHS Trust project, signed by ministers 2006, which provided two new hospitals in the capital.

By the time the coalition took office four years later nothing at all had been repaid – leaving an outstanding bill of £5.3 billion.

Jesse Norman, the Conservative MP, accused Labour of “extraordinary hypocrisy”. Their PFI bill for hospitals will cost every working family in Britain £3,600, according to Mr Norman’s figures.

PFI schemes were started by the last Conservative government under John Major in the early 1990s. However, they mushroomed under Labour with Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, using them as a way of meeting his own public borrowing rules.

Under the schemes, instead of the government raising money upfront, a private company is given a lengthy contract to build a school or hospital and then provides related ‘services’ to the public sector.

The Government leases the building for the length of the contract before it goes back into public ownership.

Any change, however small, to the building or service provided can be charged at sky high rates, allowing the company to make a huge profit.

New analysis of official figures shows that Labour initiated PFI contracts to build 103 new hospitals between 1997 and 2010. The party proclaimed at the time of the last election it has been responsible for a “new generation” of hospitals in Britain.

The total “unitary charge” payments for these hospitals was £5.1 billion. However, many projects will not be fully paid off for more than two decades – with the last one not “completing” until 2048.

The total accumulated “unitary charge” payments for the hospitals will be £65.1 billion – meaning that only 7.8 of the total was actually paid for before Labour left office.

Costs have escalated because of rising fees and additional charges for maintenance, cleaning and catering.

According to official figures, the NHS currently pays back £1.25 billion each year – but this figure will increase until 2030 when it is expected to hit £2.3 billion.

The Barts and the London NHS Trust project, to develop Barts into a “centre of excellence” for cancer and cardiac treatment and to build a new hospital at The Royal London , was started in 2006 – but payments will not even commence until 2013-14 and will not be finished until 2048.

By that time, it will have cost £5.3 billion despite only having a “capital value” of £1 billion, according to the Treasury.

Poorly negotiated PFI contracts have already led to examples of waste including Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich having to have 64 visits a year from pest controllers even if there are no pests to control. When there are pests, the trust must pay for further visits.

In another example, officials at the Central Middlesex Hospital in north west London said that, on average, contractors charged it £210 to install an electric socket.

Senior Labour figures including Gordon Brown strongly defended using PFI schemes while in power but, more recently, leading shadow ministers have admitted errors.

John Healey, the shadow health secretary, said earlier this month: “There is definitely a case for saying we were poor at PFI, poor at negotiating PFI contracts from the outset.”

Andy Burnham, a former health secretary who is now shadow education secretary, said last year: “We made mistakes. I’m not defending every pen stroke of the PFI contracts we signed.”

Mr Norman, a member of the Treasury select committee, said: “This shows extraordinary hypocrisy. The last Government claimed to be investing in public services.”

“In fact their true investment was less than less than one tenth of what they claimed. Labour didn’t manage to pay for even one new PFI hospital on their watch.”

“Labour maxed out the nation’s credit card with a £60 billion bill for new hospitals, loading future generations with staggering debt repayments.”

“After bringing the country to the brink of bankruptcy, they now have no credible plan to clear up the mess they left us with.”

“Their approach – to spend less without making any reforms at all – would leave the NHS in crisis.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Labour-left-taxpayer-60billion-bill-for-new-hospitals

NHS trusts are closing accident and emergency departments to help pay for hospitals built under Labour’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) an investigation by The Daily Telegraph has found.
Since 2007, more than a fifth of England’s hospital trusts with active PFI hospitals have closed casualty departments, or published proposals to do so. In the same period, only four per cent of trusts without PFI hospitals have closed, or proposed to close, A&E units.

Fewer than a quarter of England’s 168 NHS hospital trusts have significant PFI hospitals in operation. But these trusts account for almost two-thirds of A&E closures or proposed closures.

Health campaigners said there was a “clear connection” between the “inflated” costs of the PFI and the cuts in A&E.

Most trusts insisted there was no connection — not all A&E closures are necessarily done on financial grounds and some are supported by local clinicians.

In recent days, The Daily Telegraph has disclosed how some PFI hospitals – built and operated by the private sector, and effectively rented back to the taxpayer – will end up costing the public purse more than 10 times their capital value.

The new Princess Royal University Hospital in Bromley, south London, cost £118million to build. It will end up costing taxpayers £1.2billion, including facilities management. South London Healthcare, the NHS trust responsible for the Princess Royal, has a second PFI hospital, the Queen Elizabeth in Woolwich.

The trust’s annual deficit was raised to £100million by the two deals. It has closed the A&E unit at one of its non-PFI hospitals, Queen Mary’s in Sidcup.

In internal documents seen by The Daily Telegraph, the trust stated that the “occupation costs” of the PFI hospitals were roughly double those of its non-PFI hospital.

A spokesman admitted that its PFI contracts placed “some undeniable restrictions on our flexibility”. But she insisted that the decision to close A&E at Sidcup was “entirely unrelated” to PFI.

Other trusts closing A&E units include Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, which recently opened a new PFI hospital and plans to shut the full A&E unit at its non-PFI hospital in Rugby.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge Trust, which opened a new PFI hospital in Romford, wants to close the A&E unit King George’s Hospital in Ilford.

East Lancashire Trust has closed A&E at its Burnley hospital to help pay for a new PFI hospital at Blackburn. In Nottinghamshire, Sherwood Forest NHS Trust has downgraded A&E services at Newark after opening a new PFI hospital in Mansfield. At least four other trusts with PFI hospitals have similar plans.

Under its PFI contract, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich, must have 64 visits a year from pest controllers, even when there are no pests to control. When there are pests, the hospital must pay for further visits, which it did 10 times last year.

Food served at the Queen Alexandra PFI hospital in Portsmouth is cooked in south Wales, then driven 100 miles to Hampshire.

Early PFI hospitals had on average 20 per cent fewer beds than the hospitals they replaced, according to research. Because of high service charges, several PFI hospitals cannot afford to keep even these reduced numbers of beds fully open.

In an effort to disguise their private ownership, a number of PFI hospitals have changed their names to include a royal connection. Greenwich District Hospital became Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Salford Hope Hospital is now Salford Royal. Oldchurch Hospital, Romford, became Queen’s Hospital. Farnborough Hospital, in Bromley, was renamed after Princess Anne.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Casualty-units-shut-to-pay-for-private-finance-hospital-contracts