Liberating the NHS: Regulating healthcare providers

The Department of Health is consulting on a range of radical initiatives linked to the Health White Paper.

One of these: 'Liberating the NHS: regulating healthcare providers', concerns its proposal to establish Monitor as an economic regulator for the healthcare sector. Monitor will have the duty to licence providers of NHS funded services, set tariffs and promote competition in the health and social care sector.

The Government's White Paper and specifically its proposals for turning Monitor into an economic healthcare regulator are radical and wide ranging.

The NHS is already a mix of competition and monopoly provision, encompassing a wide range of providers including NHS Acute and Foundation Trusts, GPs, independent sector providers and third sector organisations. Economic interests are clearly already at stake and markets are developing. There is therefore already a role for competition and procurement law.

These new proposals will lend weight and specialist expertise to the application of competition and procurement law in the sector and should, in time, help enable the benefits of competition to be enjoyed.

Wragge & Co will be keeping a close eye on the way in which these significant forms are to be implemented. In the meantime, take a look at our analysis of the Government's plans for Monitor to promote competition in the sector.

It is the third Wragge & Co update following publication of the White Paper. Further Wragge & Co briefings will be provided on other aspects of the proposed Monitor reforms.