07.01.13
AQP status for over 100 healthcare firms will ‘atomise’ NHS
Over 100 healthcare firms have been granted ‘any qualified provider’ (AQP) status, Department of Health figures show, which critics say will lead to the fragmentation of NHS care.
The 105 firms are now allowed to provide basic NHS services, such as physiotherapy, dermatology, MRI scanning and psychological therapy. Out of 87 providers that have recently started delivering services, 38 are from the private sector.
Each PCT must now open up at least three health services to AQP, to raise standards and provide patients with greater choice. The status does not guarantee firms a set number of patients or income.
Doctors and medical professionals have hit out at the move, which could complicate and fragment care, rather than improve it, they say. Dr Clare Gerada, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “AQP will help to atomise the NHS. It's causing the NHS to be split up into thousands of different providers of health services.
“It's also atomising the patient into individual parts – their eyes, ears, mental health and so on – which is wrong and unhelpful, and forcing them to interact with multiple different services rather than just their local NHS.”
Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the British Medical Association's GPs committee, said: “AQP will be the Government's opportunity to fragment care and finally do away with any notion that there is a national health service. Logically if other people start providing a service, those who are providing it at the moment are going to have their viability reduced. The result of that is that the hospital service shrinks.”
Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: “By opening the door to so many private providers, ministers are fragmenting the NHS and taking it further away from the integration they claim to support. They risk leaving the NHS increasingly beholden to the private sector and less able to provide its own services.”
But health minister Earl Howe said: “This is about offering patients more choice, control and driving up the quality of their care, and the idea that this will have a negative impact on healthcare and patients is nonsense.
“Patients have already had choice for non-urgent hospital treatments like joint replacements for several years and this hasn't destabilised services.”
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