The plot thickens...

Well! There’s been an important development about something I wrote about last week, so I thought I’d bring my lovely readers up to date!

First, let’s have a little recap…

I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the revolving door between the private healthcare sector, and those appointed to make big decisions about the NHS on behalf of the public. Officials often bounce between jobs and lucrative consultancy work in the private sector, and jobs within some of our most important healthcare-related institutions. And I think that’s a massive problem.

With the NHS becoming increasingly privatised, I think there should be a really clear line between the people working within the private healthcare sector, and the people deciding things for the NHS and advising ministers.

In fact if it were up to me, I’d want all senior decision-makers to have a long “wash-out” period between any work done on behalf of private companies and taking up positions within NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care. That way, things would be cleaner, concerns about conflict of interest could be reassured, and we wouldn’t be left wondering about who was influencing their decisions.

Last week I wrote a piece about this revolving door, and about one senior official in particular. Samantha Jones - who is currently the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care - started her career as an NHS nurse and then moved into management, eventually becoming the Chief Exec of Operose, the UK arm of a major US private healthcare company. And after being recruited by Boris Johnson, her career has had a meteoric rise over the past few years…