US healthcare giant’s takeover of UK GP practices lands in high court
A dispute over the takeover of one of the UK’s biggest GP practice operators by the US healthcare giant Centene Corporation reached the high court today, in a case which could overturn approval for a deal condemned by campaigners as “privatisation by stealth” of the NHS.
The request for a judicial review, which will be heard in the high court in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, was crowdfunded by a coalition of NHS campaign groups and the Unite union. It is being brought by Anjna Khurana, an NHS Patient and Islington councillor. She claims she is one of 375,000 patients across London who were only informed of the takeover of their GP surgeries after the event.
Health campaign groups Keep Our NHS Public, 999 Call for the NHS and We Own It have joined Unite in bringing the case. Two crowdfunding campaigns by Khurana have raised more than £77,000 from the public.
A year ago, Operose Health, a UK subsidiary of Centene, acquired the privately owned AT Medics, which was set up in 2004 by six NHS GPs and ran 37 GP practices across 49 sites in London. The merger created the largest private supplier of GP services in the UK.
The group now serves 570,000 patients across 67 practices, and employs 1,500 healthcare professionals, including 350 GPs. Alongside GP practices, Centene’s UK interests include Circle Health Group,, one of Britain’s biggest private hospital operators.
A coalition of doctors, campaigners and academics has voiced concerns in a letter sent last year to the then health secretary, Matt Hancock, describing the takeover as “an example of the privatisation of the NHS by stealth”, and asking him to order an investigation by the Care Quality Commission.
They claimed at the time the change of control was approved for eight
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