(2) how much has been spent to date on securing an independent sector treatment centre for South East Essex.
The Department is working with the NHS East of England SHA to deliver independent sector treatment centre (ISTC) services in Essex. It is currently anticipated that there will be three ISTCs in the region, located in Braintree, Basildon and Southend.
The aims of the Department’s ISTC programme are to:
help provide capacity to deliver swift access to treatment for national health service patients.
support the implementation of patient choice.
stimulate innovative models of service delivery and drive up productivity, and;
introduce contestability between providers of healthcare services for NHS patients.
The ISTC programme comprises central resources which work across all schemes and the programme in general. These resources are not disaggregated by individual scheme.
In wave 1 of the ISTC programme ex-gratia payments were made in relation to the South Essex scheme. The amounts paid are commercially sensitive.