You have been warned

"Transforming" & "Vertical Integration".

As in "Transforming" Community Services.

Every PCT in the land has been ordered by the DoH to complete the purchaser-provider split within the next 8 months, by divesting itself of all its community services. These must either be set up as independently-contracting cooperatives ("Social enterprises"), or handed over in their entirety to an alternative contractor.

Such organisations will inevitably be too small to be financially viable, so the preferred solution, & inevitable doom, is for "Vertical Integration" - in plain English, a hostile takeover by the local Acute Trusts.

The Trusts, of course, have perverse incentives NOT to provide community service, but to get everyting transferred to in-patient care, especially as non-elective emergencies to get the massively increased PBR tariffs.

So, in translation, "Transforming" means utterly destroying.

As a means of providing care, or saving money, it is barking mad.

But as a means of fattening up the acute trusts for eventual privatising, it is a brilliant way to give them abusable & highly desirable monopolies.

And in the meantime, as a side-effect, the eligibility of the employees of the divested services for the NHS pension is already being questioned with a view to being cancelled - potentially setting a dangerous precedent for existing GPs & future employees of privatised trusts.

So be advised, this is not going to go away, with or without a change of geovernment. It is civil service policy & not open to democratic debate.