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PFI hospitals are cleaner, KPMG report states

Hospitals built under the Private Finance Initiative have been graded as cleaner than more conventionally procured hospitals, built at a similar time. This was the finding from a new report from KPMG and the University College London.

The KPMG Infrastructure Spotlight Report found that PFI hospitals are self-assessed as being cleaner, providing a better patient environment as a result, than non-PFI hospitals, where cleaning is either in-house or outsourced.

Despite this, the cost of cleaning services remains at a similar level.

Although patient scores may be influenced by the initial design and construction quality of new PFI builds, the report states that the quality of facilities management does also influence the score, KPMG said.

However, the research doesn’t say why PFI hospitals are deemed cleaner, although Tim Stone, chair of KPMG’s Global Infrastructure Group suggests that financial and other incentives encourage better performance.

‘I am not surprised by what experience and intuition would lead me to expect. I know from personal experience that in a PFI contract these incentives are very much in line with delivering an excellent patient environment and a clean hospital,’ Stone suggests.

Cleaning costs remains similar for both PFI and non-PFI, although costs remain more stable and predictable in PFI hospitals.

Stone, who advised the Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust on the Darent Valley PFI Hospital, the first PFI contract to be let in 1997, said that this stability is due to long-term maintenance costs being locked in. This prevents expenditure cuts when public sector budgets are squeezed.

‘Almost 15 years since we started work on the approach, I hear it often referred to as the source for many headaches due to the safeguards in place.’

‘I do, however, take comfort that money has been set aside into a life cycle fund for responsible maintenance,’ Stone said.

‘In contrast, when I visit non-PFI hospitals, the conversations quickly turn to the generally astronomical backlog maintenance which is being held back.’

Further work needs to take place to ensure that reliable cost data is provided by non-PFI hospitals, in order to make more informed decisions, KPMG stated.

‘There is not reliable and high quality information about the cost of operations,’ the report concluded.

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