BMJ 2000;320:797 ( 18 March )

Letters

PFI rides again

    Scepticism remains at the grassroots
    The future does not bode well
    Scheme was the lesser of two evils
    Whatever happened to the NHS's response to the BMJ 's articles?
    We're still waiting

Scepticism remains at the grassroots

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR---I was surprised that McGinty thought that clinicians in Hereford were "satisfied with the result" of the plans for the private finance initiative.1 Few of the hospital doctors in Hereford whom I have talked to are confident that the new smaller hospital will have enough beds to cope with local demands, and general practitioners have consistently maintained through the local medical committee that they believe that the new hospital will be too small. The county already has an efficient network of general practitioners and community hospitals in the market towns, and there is little slack in the system.

Perhaps one reason why McCloskey and Deakin maintain that hospital admission rates have not risen in Hereford2 is because it is such a struggle to have a patient admitted. Indeed, the hospital was recently closed to admissions. Being told that my patient with pneumonia and status epilepticus was number four . . . [Full text of this article]
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Relevant Articles

Private finance initiative
F McGinty, Kambiz Boomla, Sella Shanmugadasan, Clare Highton, Gaby Tobias, Bhupinder Kohli, B McCloskey, and M Deakin
BMJ 2000 320: 250. [Extract] [Full Text]

The private finance initiative: NHS capital expenditure and the private finance initiative---expansion or contraction?
Declan Gaffney, Allyson M Pollock, David Price, and Jean Shaoul
BMJ 1999 319: 48-51. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Jones, J. (2000). The private finance initiative: spinning out the defence. BMJ 320: 1460-1461 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

PFI (Private finance initiative)Hospital Pathology Facilities
Philip F Roberts
bmj.com, 25 May 2004 [Full text]
Any response yet?
Christopher Anton
bmj.com, 26 May 2004 [Full text]
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