HSJ 16 June, 2014 | By Tracey Bush
Give social enterprise a greater role in the provision of local healthcare and you can energise staff, save the NHS money and bypass the red tape that holds back innovation, argues Tracey Bush
NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens talks about reinventing community hospitals, not preserving them. So, what if staff in your local community hospital were employed not by the NHS, but by a social enterprise?
‘Our relative independence gives us enormous scope for innovation. When we have an idea, there really isn’t any red tape’
For the past two years I have been running Spiral Health, a small social enterprise in the North West performing just that role. In April 2012, ours was the first to take over a NHS secondary care unit.
The world of Dave Tomlinson 