Health bosses are to publish a “secret” new plan for regional health services – just days after Virgin Care won a seven-year contract to run community services in Bath and North East Somerset.
The plans to be released on Tuesday (November 15) are a blueprint for how health and care services – including hospitals – will operate in B&NES, Swindon and Wiltshire over the next five years.
The leaders of health and care organisations in the three areas began working on the new plans in April at the behest of NHS England, which has ordered reviews of NHS services around the country in an attempt to overhaul them and save money.
The public have not yet had a chance to see most of the plans because, according to a BBC report of a health think-tank’s claims, NHS managers were told by NHS England to keep them “out of the public domain”.