Futurebuilders England has invested £550,000 to fund the formation of Urgent Health UK (UHUK), a consortium of five of the country’s largest social enterprise providers of out of hours care.
The investment will create the largest social enterprise of its kind in the UK, allowing UHUK to tender for more out of hours contracts, often in partnership with NHS Direct. The investment will increase the service delivery of its five partner members by enabling them to tender for contracts outside of their geographical area.
Each of the partners currently has an out of hours care contract in its core area of operation and together they deliver services to over five million people across England. It is estimated that this investment will enable an additional 300,000 people to access the consortium’s out of hours care.
The five partner organisations are Devon Doctors, SELDOC (Lewisham, Lambeth and Southwark), Urgent Care 24 (North Merseyside), Herts Urgent Care Ltd (Hertfordshire) and South East Health (Kent).
Dr Simon Abrams, newly appointed Medical Director of UHUK said: “We’re delighted to have secured the funding to start up UHUK, to enable us to fight for NHS contracts. In our experience, we have found that GPs like working for not for profit companies rather than commercial providers – we share a common vision of how GP out of hours services should be delivered and we hope to make great strides with this investment over the initial three year period.”
Jonathan Lewis, Chief Executive of Futurebuilders England said: “This is exactly what third sector organisations that are committed to winning contracts should be doing. They have grasped a changing environment and adapted quickly to it. UHUK have a very bright future ahead of them.”
