PFI hospital contracts ‘endangering patient care’

NHS hospitals built under private finance initiative (PFI) schemes should renegotiate their contracts as they represent poor value and are putting lives at risk, a leading public health doctor has claimed.

Professor Allyson Pollock, from the Centre for International Public Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh, said the ring-fenced and inflation-linked nature of PFI repayments prioritises investor returns over patient care.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Pollock and colleagues suggested existing contracts should therefore be revisited in light of the government's austerity measures.

The majority of large-scale public capital investment in the UK has been through PFI purchasing schemes since 1997, with 101 of the 135 new NHS hospitals built between 1997 and 2009 financed in this way.

Professor Pollock's report said: "Cuts in NHS funding and the high cost of PFI debt charges translate into staff redundancies, service closures and reductions in access to and quality of care for patients."

This comes after a recent National Audit Office report criticised the monitoring of PFI contracts and warned that some trusts pay more than necessary for PFI services.