A new study shows that P3 hospitals in Britain are cutting patient care to pay fixed profits to a private consortium.
Ten P3 hospitals are facing millions of dollars in deficits, while locked into 30-year contracts that require them to pay fixed monthly fees to the consortium that built and now maintains the buildings. Costs for consultants were found to be another financial pressure.
As a consequence, the public is suffering from cuts to clinical services, too few hospital beds and parking fee hikes – areas over which the hospitals still have some budgetary control.
In March, a patient was left waiting on a trolley for 88 hours in a flagship P3 hospital in the UK after admission for urgent treatment of acute pain and breathing problems. A spokesperson for the hospital blamed the incident on a chronic shortage of beds and an unexplained increase in emergency admissions.
Meanwhile, privateers are ‘fining’ PFI hospitals hundreds of thousands of pounds for taking too many patients. Secret clauses linking penalties to the use of services were recently found written into contracts, leaving hospitals already facing deficits to pay penalties when bed occupancy or workload caps were exceeded.
A spokesperson of the British health department admits that hospitals are on the hook to pay for higher services in “all PFI contracts”.
