Protest To Be Held Outside Ealing NHS Meeting

Ealing Save Our NHS to picket Virgin Care community engagement event

A protest organised by Ealing Save Our NHS is being held outside Ealing Town Hall this Friday (17 August). The group plans to picket a community engagement event being held by Virgin Care who are bidding for a 10 year contract to run Ealing's Out of Hospital Services.

Virgin Care are meeting with members of the local voluntary care sector and other members of the community to explain their plans for the borough. Ealing Save Our NHS object to the notion that voluntary organisations can provide an adequate substitute for paid NHS services.

They say a ten year contract that the Ealing Clinical Commissioning Group proposes to award is almost unprecedented and that the contract could be worth over a billion pounds. They claim that service standards would decline as the contractor would be expected to do things on the cheap and it is unrealistic to expect care in the community to replace care within a hospital. They also say if the London North West Hospitals NHS Trust doesn’t get the contract it will cause them further financial problems which will impact severely on Ealing Hospital.

The protest is being held from 1pm to 2pm with the meeting due to start at 1.45pm. You can sign up to attend the meeting online.

August 16, 2018