The CEO of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network (IHPN) has challenged the new Labour government to ensure private healthcare firms can find a “way in” to provide their services to the NHS.
In the wake of the Labour Party returning to power for the first time in 14 years, the IHPN released a briefing Building an NHS fit for the future: delivering the mission The role of the independent healthcare sector.
The briefing calls on government to make it easier for providers to deliver new and additional services to the NHS, by entering the market for the first time or expanding on their current offering to patients.
To achieve this goal it says integrated care boards (ICBs) should ensure that they are openly commissioning new services to give new providers a ‘way in’ where they can demonstrate they can deliver innovative services.
It adds the Independent Patient Choice and Procurement Panel should continue to deal effectively with provider complaints when their ability to deliver services is “unfairly restricted”.
The IHPN further calls for the expansion of the range of services where patient choice applies and where ICBs can therefore accredit providers to deliver them using “light touch” procurement routes.
This, it adds, should include moving to models of direct access diagnostics, self referrals and choice-based community services including musculoskeletal (MSK) and physiotherapy.
Expanding on the point in speaking at a webinar organised by LaingBuisson last week, IHPN CEO David Hare (pictured) said: “The sector can mobilise rapidly and can turn new services around very quickly, but within all of that, we need some stability and a long term framework in which to operate – and crucially a way in…
“If a new government is serious about opening the door to innovation from the private sector, it will need to ensure that there’s confidence that those services can enter the market and won’t be blocked by the NHS.”