jeffs posts
coming our way A GP practice taken over by Virgin Care has been placed in special measures after going from an official rating of “outstanding” to “inadequate” in less than two years despite increased funding. The Sutherland Lodge practice in Chelmsford, Essex, was taken over by the private provider in July 2016 after the previous partners handed back their contracts following £400,000 funding cuts to their contract with NHS England. Prior to Virgin Care taking over, the practice was among the 4 per cent rated outstanding across England. But an inspection report published on 14 May by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) reveals that Sutherland Lodge is now rated inadequate overall. The report is based on an inspection carried out in December 2017 – just 18 months after Virgin Care took over the practice. Under Virgin Care Services Ltd, a subsidiary of Virgin Care, the CQC rated Sutherland Lodge inadequate on four of the five key measures looked at by the regulator – the safe, effective, responsive and well-led categories – and rated it “requires improvement” in the “caring” category. A damning report by the regulator found that “risks to patients were not being appropriately assessed or their safety monitored and managed so that they were supported to stay safe”. Medicines and equipment “were not always in date or stored at the correct temperature” and staff did not take action when temperatures were above recommended levels, it warned. A lack of continuity of care reported by patients “had a detrimental impact on the quality of patient treatment and care”, services were “not always planned or delivered in a way that met patients’ needs”, appointment systems were “not working well” and the practice had “no clear leadership structure”, inspectors concluded. Inspectors have placed the practice in special measures, warning that if improvements are not made within six months Virgin Care could be stripped of the 10-year Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contract it was awarded to run Sutherland Lodge. More money According to a freedom of information response from NHS England, seen by GPonline, the “contract value rate” of the APMS deal awarded to Virgin was 14 per cent higher than the previous contract. Virgin Care took on over £1bn in NHS contracts last year – a third of the total value of contracts won by non-NHS providers in 2017. The company, part of Richard Branson’s business empire, is expected to expand further into the health service over the next few years. Carol Sams, the former practice manager at Sutherland Lodge, said it was “devastating” to see the rapid decline of the practice. She said that when the previous partnership was forced out by the threat of losing a third of its income. “We had just completed our 19th year underspent in prescribing, our fifth year underspent in planned care and the many extra services we provided under our PMS contract had saved the local economy £750,000,” she told GPOnline. A spokesman for Sutherland Lodge Surgery said: ‘We were aware of and were addressing issues at the surgery before the CQC’s inspection on 7 December. We have continued to implement our comprehensive action plan since, taking on board the inspectors’ feedback and the vast majority of improvements have been implemented and inspectors have already acknowledged improvements.” Investment Further major investment has been approved for premises improvements – Chelmsford City Council was advised last year by a spending panel to provide £525,000 in funding for “full refurbishment of the Sutherland Lodge doctors surgery”. Dr Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, told i: “The Government has seriously underfunded general practice to the point where it cannot cope. This is the end result, and it is a tragic example of the effect privatisation can have on our NHS. “Here a contract has been handed over to private providers at the expense of patient care and safety simply because of lack of government funding. With the withdrawal of funding from GP practices it leaves many in an impossible situation and provides fertile ground for companies to profit. This end result clearly highlights how businesses running NHS services for eventual profit does not work.” A spokesman for Virgin Care said: “We were aware of and were addressing issues at the surgery before the CQC’s inspection on 7 December. We have continued to implement our comprehensive action plan since, taking on board the inspectors’ feedback and the vast majority of improvements have been implemented and inspectors have already acknowledged improvements
Posted by jeffrey davies on 11 December 2018
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jeffs posts
Mike this morning also put up a very importance piece about how Tweezer's party has also been seeking to undermine British democracy by providing 2.25 million pounds to a think tank, the Institute of Statecraft, to spread smears against Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour party, and individual Labour politicos.
The Institute is based in an old mill in Fife, and runs a programme, the Integrity Initiative, to counter Russian propaganda. This is supposed to be done through a collection of friendly journos and 'influencers' throughout Europe, who will go online and attack Russian propaganda on the Net. Instead, it appears that the think tank has been using the money given it by the Foreign Office to smear Corbyn as an instrument of Moscow on Twitter. One Tweet included an extract from a newspaper article denouncing Corbyn as a 'useful idiot', a phrase Lenin used to describe sympathetic individuals in the West, who could be manipulated by the Bolsheviks. The Tweet then said
His open visceral anti-Westernism helped the Kremlin cause, as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money.
Another Tweet ran
It’s time for the Corbyn left to confront its Putin problem.’ A further message refers to an ‘alleged British Corbyn supporter’ who ‘wants to vote for Putin.
Emily Thornberry, Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, stated it was outrageous and said that one of the cardinal rules of British politics was that government funds should not be used for party purposes. She made the point that the smears weren't outside the government's control, as it said in its funding agreement with the company that the money would be used in party to expand the Integrity Initiative as well as Twitter and social media accounts. She concluded
So the Government must now answer the following questions: Why did the Foreign Office allow public money to be spent on attempting to discredit Her Majesty’s Opposition? Did they know this was happening? If not, why not? And if they did, how on earth can they justify it?
According to RT, the revelations follow the leak of classified documents to the Sunday Mail.
Chris Williamson commented
What the hell is going on? I tabled a parliamentary question recently and discovered the Foreign Office has given 2 million of public money to a shady organization that's indulging in black propaganda against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party.
Another Labour MP, Jon Trickett, said
If it is true that there is a deep state, taxpayer funded operation against our party it is totally unacceptable and explanation and an enquiry must be conducted immediately.
RT reported that the Foreign Office has now launched an investigation stating that any involvement in domestic politics would be condemned. Alan Duncan, the minister of state for Europe and the Americas, said
I don't know the facts, but if there is any kind of organization for which we are paying, which is involved in domestic politics in that way, I would totally condemn it.
Here's RT's report on the scandal.
Mike in his article about the think tank and its smears also quotes Duncan, who said that
The Institute for Statecraft is an independent, Scottish, charitable body whose work seeks to improve governance and enhance national security. They launched the Integrity Initiative in 2015 to defend democracy against disinformation.
In financial year 2017/18, the FCO funded the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative £296,500. This financial year, the FCO is funding a further £1,961,000. Both have been funded through grant agreements.
Mike comments that the statement that Institute for Statecraft was defending democracy was simply untrue, as they should not be posting disinformation on social media. And nobody else should be doing so either.
He also reminded us that less than a year ago, Gollum, I mean, Tweezer, had announced that she was launching a rapid reaction force based in the cabinet office to rebut fake news. Mike had said then that
This is not an attempt to ensure a ‘fact-based public debate’. It is a bid to hijack the news and turn it into Tory propaganda.
He adds in his article that he was right. It's just that the government has outsourced its propaganda.
Mike's article also gives the responses of a number of Labour supporters and MPs condemning the Institute's smears. One of them, Aaron Bastani, states that if the Institute has a list of journos and influencers smearing the leader of the opposition, then it has to be made public immediately. And Dan Carden MP remarked on how, with the exception of the Scottish Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, this was being ignored by the mainstream media. He stated that these were strange times, but we still expected democracy to be defended.
Mike replies
Yes, we should expect democracy to be defended.
Just not by right-wingers like those running the BBC and most of the print news media – or by our democratically-elected government.
Yet this is the government that wants to push us all through Brexit, in the name of democracy.
It doesn’t stack up. We need an election to get the Tories out of office, and then a police investigation to find out who authorised the Foreign Office to fund this offence.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 11 December 201
