'Award-winning Devon NHS service faces insolvency'
According to an article on the Devonlive news website, Chime, an ‘award-winning Devon NHS service,’ faces insolvency. The article says:
Devon’s award-winning NHS hearing services provider Chime claims it is being ‘forced’ into insolvency by the region’s health commissioner. The reason, they say, is that it hasn’t received enough funding to cope with increasing patient referrals.
It alleges it is being unfairly blamed by Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB), the local NHS body with responsibility for funding healthcare services in Devon, for causing ‘significant’ waiting times and is now unable to bid to keep its £4m contract to run the service because it is financially unviable.
Chime, which has had a contract to offer NHS adult and children’s audiology services on behalf of NHS Devon in Exeter and east Devon since 2011, is a Community Interest Company (CIC). It means that any surplus it makes is invested back into the service for hearing impaired patients.
However, bids to run the service are now open to private firms without a commitment to putting profits being back into the NHS. It is not known what immediate impact it while have on waiting times while a new provider is found, but Devon ICB says it hopes one will be in place by spring.
According to latest NHS data, which is for November 2024, the total number of people on the Chime waiting list then was 5,489. Of those, 2,264 have been waiting more than 13 weeks to be seen.
A Devon ICB report on audiology services, shared with the Health Service Journal, was written in March 2024, but was not made public. It is claimed to have said that waits in the eastern areas of Devon where Chime provides its service, where at 10 months, whereas waits in other areas stood at eight weeks at most.
“It will also be more expensive as they have changed the length of the pathway and refuse to recognise the value we were providing, nor will they share data that would demonstrate its standard practise with commercial providers. It is a disgrace.
“Through the actions of Devon ICB we are being forced into insolvency. Something that has been really, really good is going to be dismantled due to non-understandable decisions based on an incorrect report.
“When we constructed plans to increase capacity, the ICB said it was not a priority or that they were comfortable with waiting times. On no occasion were we managed as if it was our responsibility to find the money and funding ourselves; how could we do that?
“Then suddenly everything changed, and we were told the waits were our fault. This is how they represented things in their board report which is grossly misleading.
“For some reason, the ICB does not want small successful providers running services. A commercial provider will have to take the patient case load on and I can’t see making improvements for a while, if ever, and instead of profits going to NHS service improvements it will be going into shareholders pockets.
“The right thing for patients would be to save our service, the capacity that we have and then allow us to compete with commercial providers if that is what commissioners want. We are proud of our quality, believe our patients will want us to continue and a better commissioned review would then reduce waits fairly.”
In an email sent to NHS England and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) just before Christmas, Mr Parsons accused Devon ICB of ‘bullying’ small providers who do not have the power of larger providers. He added that if the ICB had moved to AQP earlier, waiting times would not be so high as patients would be able to be seen by other providers.
Assurances over the future of the services have been provided by Devon ICB in a statement. However, it did not answer a number of questions asked by DevonLive, including details about its current and most recent waiting times, why it did not provide Chime with extra funding to cope with an increase in demand on the service, why it did not move to AQP earlier, why the new contract is being split in two and what the changes mean for patients in Devon.
A spokesperson for NHS Devon said: “A procurement process is underway for audiology services in the eastern locality, one for adult hearing aids and one for specialist services, with the aim of improving waiting times and increasing patient choice for local patients. The current provider has confirmed that they haven’t bid for the contract, however, several other bids have been received as part of this process.
“As with any procurement, there will be a managed process for the transfer of care of patients and employment of staff. We are working with the current outgoing provider on an exit plan and a smooth handover for a new provider to take over in the spring.”
Chime delivers clinical pathways for a range of conditions associated with hearing loss from hospital-based services to high street audiology services. Services range from balance services, vestibular disorders, paediatric audiology, hearing therapy,tinnitus, through to hearing aid fitting.
In addition to its 15 sites across the local area, from hospital to high street to community centres, Chime also carries out home visits for vulnerable service users, averaging around 7 home visits per week. In 2022, it won the NHS England award for Service Delivery as part of Excellence in Healthcare Science.
Article accessed here: https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/chime-insolvency-exeter-nhs-devon-9899255
Download the article from the HSJ here: Chime HSJ