The NHS is being dismantled

An article and a story in the Guardian today.

From the story:

Britain's general surgeons accuse the government today of betraying the principles of the NHS by spending billions on contracting out standard operations to the private sector, leaving NHS hospitals ill-equipped to handle the harder cases.

...

It emerged yesterday that Mercury Health, winner of a £214m contract to run five ISTCs in the south-east, is planning to send NHS patients' x-rays and other health scans to doctors in Sri Lanka or other low-cost countries for analysis. The images would be sent by email and results returned in the same way.

Two of the company's proposed centres, in Buckinghamshire and Hampshire, will be dedicated diagnostic centres, conducting more than 200,000 scans over the next five years.

The chief executive of Mercury, Peter Martin, said the "favourite" to win the contract was a firm that would hire Sri Lankan-based doctors to study the scans, although India is also being considered.

More at:

http://society.guardian.co.uk/nhsreforms/story/0,15919,1464613,00.html


The article is at:

http://society.guardian.co.uk/nhsreforms/story/0,15919,1464717,00.html