£1,942,842 spent on routine maintenance for P3 hospital

Here's a report on a recent investigation into spending for routine maintenance at a British public private partnership (P3) hospital:

"The North Cumbria Hospital Trust has paid £466 to replace a light fitting, £75 to install an air freshener, £184 to have a bell put into a reception area, £977 to install six double sockets, £110 to fit a shelf... and so it goes on. It goes on to the tune of £1,942,842 spent on routine maintenance in 2010/11. This from a debt-ridden trust haemorrhaging £1.2 million a month."

£1,942,842 is over $3 million. The investigation into the P3 was done by the British Conservative Party, hardly a bastion of anti-privatization bias.

A number of the British P3 hospitals are so weighed down by the cost of their P3 deals that they have asked government for special compensation to help them pay their bills. Here is the conclusion reached by the editorialists at one local British paper:

"Ministers are urgently considering this which will, of course, mean taxpayers again footing the bill for hospitals’ inability to pay routinely inflated bills."

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