A former chief executive of Operose Health has been appointed as the top civil servant at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
The department has today confirmed the appointment of Samantha Jones as its new permanent secretary, taking over from Sir Chris Wormald.
Ms Jones began her career as a nurse and has worked across both the NHS and the private sector, including her two-year tenure from 2019 as CEO of Operose Health, which DHSC described as ‘one of the largest primary care providers in England’.
Operose, which is now owned by HCRG Group, runs nearly 60 GP practices across the UK, most of which are located in London.
It was previously a subsidiary of the US healthcare giant Centene, and attracted controversy in 2021 after it acquired 58 GP practices in a takeover from previous owners AT Medics.
A councillor in one area of London took his CCG to court over its approval of the takeover, but a High Court judge dismissed the case in 2022.
And more recently, North Central ICB has decided to re-tender its APMS contracts with Operose for several GP practices due to concerns around overuse of non-GP staff, as well as a ‘serious breach’ when its owners enacted a ‘change of control’.
As well as her time at Operose, the new DHSC permanent secretary has also worked at NHS England on the ‘new models of care programme’, and has been an advisor to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on ‘NHS transformation’.
Ms Jones is currently a non-executive director at DHSC as well as chief operating officer for the renewable energy company Xlinks.
Health secretary Wes Streeting said she ‘brings a wealth of experience from the frontline of healthcare as a general and paediatric nurse’.
‘Equally, her work in senior management roles across both Whitehall and the health and social care sector will prove invaluable as we reintegrate NHS England back into the department to cut red tape, reduce duplication and make it fit for the future as part of our Plan for Change,’ he added.
Sam Jones brings with her her wealth of experience of conflicts of interest. Appointed to G-Square in October, a private equity healthcare corporation, she led NHSE’s New Care Models. This ‘transformation’ led to her appointment as CEO of giant US corporation Centene/Operose, where the New Care Models were implemented. An undercover documentary investigation by BBC Panorama exposed a GP APMS Operose Practice using unsafe patient care – almost entirely staffed by PAs instead of GPs, with totally inadequate supervision. “A massive risk to patient safety”, said another Sam.
We now have a Labour government, its Health advisors and bureaucrats, populated by management consultancies and private equity investors/directors and, in the case of Alan Milburn, both. With the very recent exposé by Shaun Lintern – of private sector behaviour in NHS cataract operations – clearly outlining illegal and immoral behaviour by this boon in cataract outsourcing. It is the enrichment of the corporations (£169m profit in one year) at patients’ and NHS taxpayers’ expense. These conflicts of interest are basically unregulatable and are designed to be so, as the corporations, government, NHS bodies and regulators mix and match. The NHS Counter Fraud Authority (good idea to check who’s on the Board: see Monitor’s David Bennett for instance) is investigating, and there appears to be good evidence of deceitful overcharging, cartel behaviour, poor patient care, doing unnecessary operations, and more…all over just a few years, and with no understanding of the continuing collapse of patient care. Almost as if they’re unable to put two and two together.
The era of belief in the NHS McKinsey advisory is dead, but Kibasi, Dash and others continue to get appointed. Bring back proper NHS experts and expertise and lose these recycled deathtraps.
Private Island Summary
Private Island by James Meek
“The essential public good that Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and now Cameron sell is not power stations, or trains, or hospitals. It’s the public itself. it’s us.” In a little over a generation the bones and sinews of the British economy – rail, energy, water, postal services, municipal housing – have been sold to remote, unaccountable private owners, often from overseas. In a series of brilliant portraits the award-winning novelist and journalist James Meek shows how Britain’s common wealth became private, and the impact it has had on us all: from the growing shortage of housing to spiralling energy bills. Meek explores the human stories behind the incremental privatization of the nation over the last three decades. He shows how, as our national assets are sold, ordinary citizens are handed over to private tax-gatherers, and the greatest burden of taxes shifts to the poorest. In the end, it is not only public enterprises that have become private property, but we ourselves. Urgent, powerfully written and deeply moving, this is a passionate anatomy of the state of the nation: of what we have lost and what losing it cost us – the rent we must pay to exist on this private island.