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| http://www.redpepper.org.uk/KYE/x-kye-Mar2002.html
Solomon Hughes on Nestor Healthcare, an enterprise dedicated to making money out
of our National Health Service
March 2002
Nestor Healthcare leads the pack of privatisers chewing their way through the
public sector. However, their name rarely appears outside the business pages of
our newspapers. Nestor’s main subsidiary, the British Nursing Association (BNA)
is better known. The BNA swallows money from the hard pressed NHS, but the
firm’s teeth now bite into even wider sections of the welfare state, to feed
their £160 million annual turnover.
In the looking glass world of Nestor Healthcare, nursing shortages are a good
thing. Their current annual report boasts ‘2000 was a positive year for BNA,
benefiting from the UK’s continuing shortage of nurses and healthcare workers...
The future for BNA looks very promising – the ageing population, a rising
demand for healthcare services and a continued shortage of more than 20,000
healthcare staff all point to the ever-growing need for the supply of healthcare
workers’. Typically, nurses earn slightly more through agencies than when
directly employed by hospital trusts, but lack of holiday or overtime pay
cancels out these bonuses. The agencies themselves rake in between 5 per cent
and 45 per cent extra in fees. Nestor Chief Executive Justin Jewett ‘earns’
£300,000 a year by charging the NHS agency fees. He has no medical qualification
and used to work for Mobil Oil. Only one member of Nestor’s board has a medical
qualification. Nestor’s board has no nurses.
The NHS pays £368 million a year to nursing agencies like Nestor, but the Audit
Commission found the lack of training and continuity both wasted money and
endangered patients lives. Most agency nurses are hard working, well qualified
staff, but their employers can be unscrupulous. A Guardian investigation in 1999
found that the Leeds branch of the BNA routinely sent nurses rejected by one NHS
hospital to another health service placement, ignoring complaints. Nestor
charged fees for Nurses who were incompetent or even mentally unstable. One
nurse supplied by Nestor reportedly ‘sat down on a patient's bed and urinated on
the bedclothes’.
Nestor were historically linked to the Conservatives, with Tory MP and
Countryside Alliance Chairman Charles Goodson-Wickes on the board. However, it
was the election of the New Labour government that rejuvenated Nestor allowing
them to reach beyond the NHS. Harriet Harman privatised the medical testing of
disability benefit claimants, handing the contract over to a computer services
firm, Sema. They immediately subcontracted the supply of doctors to Nestor. The
miserable treatment of claimants by the private contractors angered MPs. The
National Audit Office found that Nestor had failed to train doctors on its books
to deal properly with benefit claimants.
Thriving under Labour’s privatisation programme, Goodison-Wickes was replaced on
the board by the more Third Way friendly Ann Parker, who was appointed Chair of
the National Care Standards Council by Health Minister John Hutton. This meant
the head of the organisation policing private companies who cared for the old
and disabled ran a private firm caring for the old and disabled. Nestor
aggressively moved into providing care to local authorities. After coverage in
Private Eye Parker clearly found the conflict of interest too great and resigned
from Nestor’s board.
However, the firm found new ways to make money from Labour’s privatisation
programme, building on a literally captive market: They created a new trading
arm, ‘Forensic Medical Services’ selling healthcare to prisons. Nestor teamed up
with Group 4 to run health services at the private Oakington immigration
detention centre. Nestor also ran the medical services at the grim Feltham youth
jail.
The future may look grim for the NHS, but it looks bright for Nestor. Like all
private health executives, Nestor boss Justin Jewett is excited about Alan
Millburn’s ‘Concordat’ with the private sector, which spells profit for his
firm. Jewitt crows in his annual message to shareholders that ‘This is a great
springboard for public/private partnership and the Group is well positioned to
gain from it in 2001.’
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/KYE/x-kye-Mar2002.html
Alan
"Can't you see we're still here,
Can't you see we're still here,
Singing loud; Singing clear,
We shall not go under,
We're still here."
Nemesis Peace Centre
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