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Top e-government news, updated daily, and regular features from the top people in the public sector.
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| Cavanagh warning over PFI to build new Sick Kids |
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Health chiefs should think twice before deciding to use the controversial private finance initiative to build Edinburgh's new Sick Kids hospital, the outgoing chairman of NHS Lothian said today.
Brian Cavanagh, who steps down on Friday, voiced his frustration with the problems surrounding the PFI contract at the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
The health board and its PFI partners Consort have been heavily criticised over the hospital's £10 a day parking charges.
Mr Cavanagh said: "If I have a regret or a disappointment it is that we have not been able to resolve completely issues around car parking.
"While they don't affect the quality of care in a clinical sense, they cause unnecessary anxiety and frustration and worry for people who are by their very nature going to be anxious, either as patient or visiting people."
He said PFI had been the only way a new ERI was going to be built, but he added: "Unfortunately we were the test-bed for the first PFI."
He said would have preferred to have seen the contracts for catering and cleaning brought back in-house under the NHS.
And he suggested it may not be a good idea to build the replacement for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children through a similar public-private partnership.
Earlier this year, NHS Lothian launched a consultation on plans for a new Sick Kids, expected to be build as a stand-alone hospital next to ERI.
Mr Cavanagh said: "We know a public fundraising campaign by the Sick Kids Friends Foundation could bring in significant sums of money.
"It would be absolute lunacy, in my view, for that public generosity and goodwill not to be tapped, and indeed to be turned off by a very narrow view on having a procurement that has to be through PPP. Why would we want to restrict public generosity for a much-loved hospital?" |
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