The Health service journal
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In 2004, Alliance Medical signed an pound 80m deal to provide 635,000 scans to NHS patients over five years. The company argues its mobile scanners offer flexibility to meet demand while the NHS fills the shortfall in the diagnostics workforce. Critics point to problems including longer waits and slow communication between the company and the NHS.
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Baxter Healthcare has a successful and long-running contract to supply chemotherapy drugs to Christie Hospital trust in Manchester. More than 80 per cent of the Christie's chemotherapy drugs are now pre-ordered--one of the highest proportions in the country. A big benefit of the partnership is that Baxter staff do a lot of the compounding work, leaving trust pharmacists with more time to spend with patients and clinicians.
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A 2000 DoH review called for out-of-hours services to be straightforward for users to access, and for service planning to involve multi-disciplinary co-operation from health professionals. Out-of-hours provision has evolved since then, but missed targets, insufficient staff numbers and inequalities between different providers continue to hamper progress.