Commercial partnerships in chronic disease management: proceeding with caution

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The spirit of “new Labour” strongly supports efforts to align commercial and NHS interests. The use of private funding for capital projects, such as building hospitals, is now well established, although this practice is not without controversy.1 We discuss a different form of private finance initiative—the development of packages for disease management in collaboration with commercial companies. We describe our preliminary experiences from a health authority perspective. The Clinical Effectiveness Review Group was established in 1995 at Barnet Health Authority to address the implementation of evidence based practice at health authority level. The Director of Public Health (SF) noted that he occasionally received offers from independent organisations of “free” packages of services, directed ultimately at general practices, hospital departments, or community pharmacies. These organisations were pharmaceutical companies, producers of medical equipment, or their agents, which, despite a clear conflict of interests were perceived as offering a potentially important contribution to the health of the population (box 1). Somewhat confusingly, these offers were often presented as “managed care” packages, a term that generally implies a different approach aimed at centralised control and cost containment.2 #### Summary points Commercial companies, especially the manufacturers of drugs and medicines, increasingly seek to work in collaboration with NHS service providers to manage particular diseases or problems With such relations there are risks, but also potential benefits, and it may be more realistic to require all parties to be explicit about their potential conflicts of interest than to impose a blanket ban on negotiations One London health authority developed and used a set of standards for collaborating with the commercial sector in “managed care” initiatives The draft proposals could be used with a view to developing definitive guidance for health authorities, primary care groups, and trusts when considering such collaborative relations ### Box 1 : Examples of “disease management packages” offered by commercial companies to a London health authority 1997-9

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit: