MPs condemn NHS England for its shambolic handling of Capita contract
NewsPosted by: Dental Design 26th July 2018
The BDA has welcomed news today that a powerful group of MPs has castigated NHS England for the shambles it made of outsourcing its back-office function to private company, Capita.
In a scathing report published by the Public Accounts Committee, the MPs condemned both NHS England and Capita forcausing mayhem to health workers in the process and potentially “put[ing] patients at risk of serious harm.”
The BDA told MPs – in its written evidence to PAC – that the NHS England-Capita fiasco had forced hundreds of NHS dentists to stand idle for up to a year while patients were struggling to access NHS dentistry. The unacceptably long delays in processing NHS performer numbers (required before commencing NHS work), MPs were told, prevented NHS dentists from earning a living – putting their practices and their families in jeopardy.
Henrik Overgaard-Nielsen, BDA Chair of General Dental Practice, said:
“We thank the MPs on the committee for listening to dentists’ concerns and for making NHS England take responsibility for its grotesque failure to manage the contract.
“Given the well documented failures of NHS England to manage this contract, we have pointed out the irony to head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, that if a dentist repeatedly failed to deliver on a contract, they would be served breach notices and their contract terminated.
“The Public Accounts Committee seems to share our view that NHS England’s obsession with ‘saving’ money fails spectacularly to take account of the human cost on the hundreds of dentists forced to wait for months before they could care for their patients or support their families.
“The PAC has exposed NHS England’s outsourcing of back office functions to Capita where profits come first. This is a false economy, which has short-changed patients and taxpayers and undermines the NHS.”
