Out of Hours - OOH

The penny pinching and stealthy privatisation of critical health services continues with the Cornwall 'OOH' or Out of Hours GP contract being awarded to Serco in 2005. It's all going horribly wrong.

Patsy Hewitt was surprisingly honest, recently describing the Serco operation as 'very poor'.

For ten years, the people of Cornwall would reach an employee of 'KernowDoc' when seeking urgent medical care out of normal office hours. Kernowdoc lost this contract to 'Serco', a company that was considerably cheaper.

I believe you get what you pay for, but the 'PCT' or local Primary Care Trust, when deciding how to spend the cash, didn't think urgent medical care was worth the expense.

This from a BBC report in 2005:

KernowDoc executive director Phil Trevail said he was extremely disappointed by
the decision and hoped that the new company would be able to provide the same
level of service his company had for the past ten years. "Unfortunately
they came in cheaper than us," said Dr Trevail. "Serco have a big
infrastructure and are able to do the job cheaper than we are able to. We feel
we produced a realistic price to give a safe, responsive service. "We feel
very disappointed. We feel we have given a quality service over the past ten
years but we are glad Serco have said they will take on our staff.

Serco is a huge, faceless international company that aims to fill in the gaps left by the relentless withdrawal of the state from the public sector. Kernowdoc aimed to provide out of hours GP services to the local community and concentrated on those aims.

Write to Ann James, Chief Executive Cornwall PCT, The Sedgemoor Centre, Priory Road, St Austell, Cornwall, PL25 5AS and let her know what you think about the decision to farm off vital GP services to the cheapest bidder.