Comparison With Other Hospitals
Unlike hospitals outside the NHS, Foundation Trusts have had a cap on the proportion of their income that can come from non-NHS treatments. So, the private patient income cap was, in fact, a misnomer. It did not only apply to income derived from individual patients, it covered income from all non-NHS sources. This could include joint ventures to develop medical technologies, employers paying for counselling services or income from treating UK military personnel overseas.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 abolished the private patient income cap but FTs have to do the majority of their work for the NHS. This restriction was kept to reassure those concerned about future developments that FTs would continue to have NHS work as their central concern. Previously each FT had its own cap, set at the level of its private activity when the first FTs were established in 2003/4. About three quarters of all FTs had a cap of 1.5% or less. Until 2010 all mental health trusts were completely barred from undertaking non NHS work, but after lobbying from the Foundation Trust Network it was raised to 1.5%. These caps disappeared on 1 October 2012.
Foundation Trusts also have different reporting requirements. They produce their accounts under the Foundation Trust Financial Report Manual, which is collated and authorised by Monitor, in liaison with HM Treasury. They also have to produce annual Quality Accounts.
Read more about this topic: NHS Foundation Trusts
Famous quotes containing the words comparison with, comparison and/or hospitals:
“From top to bottom of the ladder, greed is aroused without knowing where to find ultimate foothold. Nothing can calm it, since its goal is far beyond all it can attain. Reality seems valueless by comparison with the dreams of fevered imaginations; reality is therefore abandoned.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general hospitals are private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeia than is now worshiped. Do not the quacks even direct small doses for children, larger for adults, and larger still for oxen and horses? Let us remember that we are to prescribe for the globe itself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)