NHS London GPs: Doctorpreneurs transfer NHS contracts to run 49 London GP surgeries to an American corporation

By Paul Coleman

Doctors Usman Quraishi, Muneeb Choudhry, Tarek Radwan, Hasnain Ali Abbasi, Fiyaz Lebbe, and Mohammad Aumran Tahir set up AT Medics in 2004. 

The six doctorpreneurs then bid for lucrative new primary health care contracts called Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS). Set up by the New Labour government, these contracts allow GPs and their companies to run publicly funded GP surgeries and to employ doctors.

Patients do not pay fees but 'GP consortia' companies can profit from public NHS funds to run GP surgeries.

In early 2020, AT Medics successfully bids for six 'lots' to run GP surgeries, offered under 'PRJ736 London APMS GP Contracts'. These six contracts alone are worth some £121 million.

 

Contracts

By early 2021, AT Medics holds contracts to run 49 GP surgeries that serve 370,000 Londoners across 19 London boroughs (see list below).

The directors receive £5.1m in dividends in the year ending in March 2019.

Turnover is £47.8m for the year ending in March 2020. AT Medics makes an after-tax profit of £7.1m.

 

Takeover

Out of the blue, in February 2021, Operose Health Limited takes over AT Medics - including those contracts to run 49 GP surgeries in London.

The AT Medics doctorpreneurs join the Operose Health board but they are no longer in control. Operose Health is a wholly-owned British subsidiary of the Centene Corporation, a Fortune 500 company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange and ranked as the 42nd most successful corporation in the United States.

Centene, in listing its 'product and presence', states 'Operose Health leverages the management of General Practitioner physicians...based on the blueprint outlined by the NHS'.

Centene has studied that blueprint. It knows that NHS England, the body set up in 2011 to commission services for the NHS, has an annual budget nearing £130 billion in 2021.

Operose Health's takeover of AT Medics means Centene now effectively owns those 49 GP surgeries in London.

 

Scrutiny

AT Medics reportedly sought prior authorisation for the Operose deal from NHS England and from 13 Clinical Commissioning Groups. CCGs are the public bodies - led by GPs - that commission GP services for local people.

Each CCG has a Patient Participation Group (PPG) that aims to 'put the patient at the heart of everything it (the CCG) does'.

PPGs might sound as boring as unbuttered toast. However, ignorance and apathy about their function enables CCGs to publish little or no information about the corporate takeover of these GP contracts. The few eagle-eyed patients active in PPGs do not get a proper chance to scrutinise the impact of the deal on GP surgeries.

Hence, Londoners registered at those surgeries are not informed about who now runs their surgeries. The vast majority do not even know they don't know.

For the full story and analysis, visit https://www.londonintelligence.co.uk/nhs/

© Paul Coleman, London Intelligence, Spring 2021

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