Skip to main content

For-profit LTC corporation on brink of collapse. So, P3s transfer risk, eh?

Britain's biggest for-profit long term care (LTC) operator, with 752 homes and 31,000 residents, is teetering on the brink of financial collapse as it struggles to pay an annual rent bill of £230m, the Guardian reports.

Southern Cross lost more than £300m in the six months to the end of last March.

 Over the coming months, many of Southern Cross's homes will be taken over by other operators, as landlords seek tenants who are on a sounder financial footing.

Around 3,000 Southern Cross employees are losing their jobs as part of a cost-cutting exercise by the firm, a move the GMB union says will affect the quality of care for residents. Southern Cross staff are also being asked to agree to harsh new working conditions which one care worker described as "the modern-day equivalent of slavery". Many of Southern Cross staff are already paid little more than the minimum wage of £5.90 an hour (about $9.43)

Age UK said it was alarmed the Southern Cross "situation" had reached crisis point "as families and residents of their homes will be greatly concerned.

Today, the beleaguered company saw its stock shares sink almost 10%. Reports in the weekend newspapers claimed that five Southern Cross homes had been reclaimed by one of its 80 landlords .A spokesman for Southern Cross told Interactive Investor they could not confirm or deny the report.

No doubt, defenders of "public private partnerships" (P3s) will continue to insist that P3s transfer tremendous risk from the public sector to the for-profit sector -- and continue to insist that the public pay handsomely for it.

A cartoon from the Guardian:


southern cross kipper williams



Southern Cross gets tough

Care firm's staff face harsh new working conditions
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data.   This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization.   Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion.  That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year.   The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million.     In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...
Post a Comment
Read more

The long series of failures of private clinics in Ontario

For many years, OCHU/CUPE has been concerned the Ontario government would transfer public hospital surgeries, procedures and diagnostic tests to private clinics. CUPE began campaigning in earnest against this possibility in the spring of 2007 with a tour of the province by former British Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, who talked about the disastrous British experience with private surgical clinics. The door opened years ago with the introduction of fee-for-service hospital funding (sometimes called Quality Based Funding). Then in the fall of 2013 the government announced regulatory changes to facilitate this privatization. The government announced Request for Proposals for the summer of 2014 to expand the role of "Independent Health Facilities" (IHFs).  With mass campaigns to stop the private clinic expansion by the Ontario Health Coalition the process slowed.   But it seems the provincial Liberal government continues to push the idea.  Following a recent second...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staffing.   Less and less of hospital spending is on staff.   Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development.  It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staff per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...
Post a Comment
Read more