A number of private providers are likely to take complaints to the NHS's new competition regulator Monitor over the next three years, the chief executive officer of Ramsay Health Care UK warned last week. Jill Watts, said she could almost guarantee there would be challenges to come. She told a Westminster Health Forum conference that the April switchover to clinical commissioning groups under the government's health reforms had not produced uniform changes in commissioner's attitudes to the private sector.
In one part of the country where we had almost adversarial relationships and they didn't want to use us at all they're very keen to work with us now she said. In another part of the country where we've been providing very good services 'excellent feedback' for ages we have a lead commissioner who is very interested in protecting the local trust and has blatantly said We will not work with you we have told the GPs to direct all the work to the local trust.
To date Monitor has opened investigations into two complaints about NHS commissioning decisions since it took on its new powers in April. The first was brought by a private provider of gamma knife radiosurgery in Sheffield; the second was brought by two Greater Manchester foundation trusts and concerned the commissioning of cancer surgery. In both cases the responsible commissioner was NHS England.
However Monitor's executive director of cooperation and competition Catherine Davies told the conference it had also seen a big ramp up in the number of requests for informal advice partly because we keep telling people that we're happy to give it. In one case the regulator was currently looking at she continued 'We have someone who's complained because they've lost a contract and the winner of the contract was apparently decided on a show of hands in the room.'
This blog agrees with Jill Watts. There will almost certainly be a number of competition claims to Monitor over the next twelve months as both commissioners and providers get used to operating in the new regime. It will be interesting to see the first few published decisions of Monitor to show how it will apply the new rules and guidance to individual circumstances.