A foundation trust has lost an £85m contract to provide healthcare services in its local prisons to a private company, after taking over the same services from the same company 230 miles away.
Oxleas Foundation Trust, which provides mental health and community services in south east London, runs offender health services in Kent and, until the end of this month, HMP Belmarsh and HMP Thameside in south east London. The trust lost the seven-year contract for the two prisons to Practice Plus Group, it has been announced.
It comes after the trust last year won a seven-year £236m contract to run prison health services in 10 locations in the South West, which were previously run by PPG and by another NHS provider, as previously reported. PPG is taking legal action against NHS England over the award of the contracts in the South West, lodging papers with the High Court alleging one of the bid team was biased against it and private providers, and that parts of the evaluation were “manifestly wrong”. The case is ongoing.
Meanwhile, in its most recent board papers, the trust claimed PPG had not shared patient data with them before the takeover.
The trust’s May mortality surveillance report said: “It is not feasible at present for the forensic and offender health directorate to review the learning from deaths in South West prisons because both PPG and Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership Trust [which ran four of the 10 contracts Oxleas won] were not accommodating with sharing data prior to take over. We have not yet been able to ascertain whether we have copies of all the Prison Probation and Ombudsman reports, particularly those that were closed before we took over.”
Read full article
Source: HSJ
Date: 24 May