|
Ontario Health Coalition |
Fact Sheet |
P3 Hospitals: Up-to-date Evidence from Scotland
Some recent studies and reports add to the growing body of international evidence that P3 hospitals are a serious threat to the universality and comprehensiveness of the public health system.
One of the key problems is that the higher costs of the private financing, profit-taking, consultant and legal costs places competing demands on scarce healthcare dollars. This leads to the "P3 Effect" in which the P3 sucks the available resources out of the hospitals, then out of the community health services.
As the scope of services shrinks, the public health system is unable to provide care for people. In a recent study of Scotland’s P3s, detailed below, the P3 costs have meant that hospital beds and staff are downsized and replacement community services are not affordable.
From the British Medical Association Journal, April 26, 2003
Downsizing of acute inpatient beds associated with private finance initiative: Scotland’s case study" by Allyson Pollock et al.
Major findings:
service reduction, failure to meet targets, P3 effect, financial deficit
*
Compared with public hospitals in Scotland, service delivery has been reduced across the health district associated with P3 hospital development*
The planning targets and increase in clinical activity in acute specialties in the P3 hospitals has not been achieved*
There is evidence of an independent "P3 effect" on hospital downsizing and bed reductions, which in the health district affected, has resulted in severe capacity constraints across all acute specialties*
Further hospital and community service downsizing may be required to meet the financial deficit, which is primarily due to the high costs of the P3sLetters to the BMAJ in response to this article:
Thomas M. Blaiklock, Consultant PFI/PPP
"
…there is much to suggest that, given the current state of the NHS [British National Health Service] as a public service organization, PFI/PPP is a diversion of scarce and expensive resource.…The PPP deal for West-Midland, as assessed under the new rules, is 22 million pounds more expensive than its public sector alternative…"Gordon Pledger, retired Director of Public Health, Newcastle upon Tyne
"
As our children continue to pay over the odds for these schemes over future decades they will probably regard them in the same way as we now see the "dotcom bubble"…"Fares S Haddad, Consultant, Orthopaedic Surgeon, University College Hospital Trust
"
Our trust is also awaiting completion of a new PFI hospital and relocation of services. The downsizing of acute inpatient beds, as a result of this move, is inevitable…"Ontario Health Coalition
15 Gervais Drive, Suite 305
Toronto, Ontario M3C 1Y8
www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca
phone: 416-441-2502
fax: 416-441- 4073
email:ohc@sympatico.ca