Oz girl makes good, Patricia Hewitt leaves NHS in disarray to join UK's 2nd largest Healthcare group, Boots and BT.

Patricia Hewitt, a surprisingly youthful 59, sometime member of Parliament for East Leicester, who as Health Minister handed out monster contracts under Connecting for Health, worth over £2.1bn to BT for construction of a national data spine ( delayed, over budget and beset with problems), will soon be picking up £60,000 a year as a BT non executive (and mainly non-working) Director.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, an independent parliamentary body that advises ministers and civil servants, have said she should not conduct any lobbying of government for 12 months from the date of her departure from government.

She is already a "special consultant" to Boots, the High Street pharmacists.

She also graces the boardroom of private equity company Cinven as a "senior advisor", which bought BUPA's UK hospitals for £1.44bn (€2.13bn) on 18th June 2007 - 1.544 acute beds and assets comprise 25 acute care hospitals located throughout the UK, and a treatment centre in Redhill. Employees total approximately 5,800 of which 3,300 are clinical staff. 2007 revenues are forecast to be £457m with normalised EBITDA* of £100.2m.

This added to the already owned Partnerships in Care (“PiC”), the UK’s leading provider of specialist mental health and related services which operates 940 beds in its 17 facilities around the UK.

To this was added less than one month later on July 10th, of Spanish group USP Hospitales for €675 million (£462 million) - which operates 33 facilities, including 13 hospitals, 3 ASCs, 1 imaging centre and 16 outpatient centres (with over 1,300 beds and over 2,000 physicians under contract) .

The Group, now called Spire Healthcare , on February2nd, took over Classic Hospitals, the 6th largest hospital group in the UK whose operations consist of 10 hospitals with 369 beds around the North and South East of England as well as two off-site consulting rooms and more than 2,000 employees. Spire paid £145 million (€214 million) for Classic Hospitals.

This makes Spire Healthcare the 2nd largest private hospital provider in the UK.

Kinnockite, Blairite and Harriet Harmannite she was hugely successful in introducing a smoking ban in public places .. which means no doubt that the booze 'n' fags industry won't be laying out the red carpet for her. Her remarks concerning the sailoress kidnapped by the Iranians, does however ensure her of a place in the voluminous annnals of stipudity .."It was deplorable," pronounced our grey haired, tight-lipped, double breasted Health Secretary, "that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people."


Should she need medical attention she might be well advised to stay away from an NHS hospital.