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Capita's NHS deal was founded on guesswork. It was doomed to fail | Richard Vize

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Outsourcing primary care support was meant to make things better. But Capita waded in unprepared – and caused chaos

The massive problems that have beset NHS England’s primary care support services deal with Capita, now dissected by the National Audit Office, are a textbook example of how to set up an outsourcing contract to fail. Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, with both parties grossly underestimating the size and complexity of the task and the risks involved.

The £330m, seven-year contract delivers vital support services to around 39,000 people working in primary care, including GPs, opticians and pharmacists. Each year it includes delivering more than 240,000 orders for supplies, sending out more than nine million invitations for cervical screenings, processing around £9bn of payments to GPs and pharmacists – and moving six million patient records between GP practices. It is the engine powering primary care.

Related: Capita put NHS England patients at risk, says watchdog

Capita needed to cut costs quickly, so by the end of 2016 it had shut nearly all the local offices and halved the staff

Related: More cash will force the NHS to address tougher questions than money | Richard Vize

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