Council Concern Over CATS Centre Funding Deal

Allowing hospital trusts to run controversial CATS centres could use up vital NHS funds and see hospitals fail to hit waiting time targets, it was claimed today.

Labour County Coun Keith Riley warned the county council’s adult social care and health overview and scrutiny committee of “money going down the drain” if trusts opted to run the services themselves.

Chorley Hospital will run its own CATS centre, rather than South African “for profit” firm Netcare, the preferred bidder to run the contentious facilities. But Coun Riley said: “Netcare have a guaranteed income on a sliding scale for five years. I would hate to see money go down the drain if trusts take it on themselves.”

Clinical Assessment Treatment and Support (CATS) centres are a Government initiative aimed at ensuring patients wait no more than 18 weeks from referral to treatment. Coun Riley added: “I felt that to get down to this 18 week maximum wait, many trusts could not do it, so the Government introduced these CATS where the provider would be Netcare. What concerns me deeply is that Netcare has this five year sliding scale. If they get no patients in the first year, the service will still be guaranteed funding.”

Around 1,100 Chorley people signed local Labour MP Lindsay Hoyle’s petition calling for the centre to be run by the hospital. He said: “I think it is about listening to public opinion and delivering on that opinion, and the opinion was clear in Chorley. A Labour councillor ought to believe in the NHS rather than a private company whose only interest is shareholders.”