McKinsey & Company

UK: the privatisation of NHS (2010-)

McKinsey has been embedded in the UK health system for decades and has played a central role in efforts in recent decades to marketise and privatise the NHS. It has advised on reform of the NHS at every level of the system: the Department of Health, the health regulator, regional health bodies and local healthcare buyers (the new GP-led 'commissioning groups').

McKinsey alumni embedded in NHS

It has been helped in this by having former employees (see alumni network below) in central positions in the UK's health system. In recent years these have included:

• David Bennett; CEO of the health sector regulator, Monitor (2010-2015); spent 18 years with Mckinsey
• Adrian Masters; 'managing director of sector development', and former strategy director of NHS regulator, Monitor (2005-); ex-Mckinsey
• Paul Bate: 'director of strategy and intelligence' at the healthcare provider regulator, the Care Quality Commission; ex-Mckinsey
• Sigurd Reinton; board member of NHS regulator, Monitor (2012-); spent 20 years with Mckinsey
• Tim Kelsey: 'national director for patients and information' (2012-2015) at NHS England, one of only 8 national directors in charge of the NHS; ex-Mckinsey (where he led on 'the development of consumer propositions in public services’)
• Kingsley Manning, chair of the Health and Social Care Information Centre, custodians of NHS patient data; ex-Mckinsey
• Penny Dash, former Department of Health head of strategy and planning, co-author of the NHS Plan of 2000, which initiated the marketisation process; current McKinsey director in London office, focused on 'the redesign of healthcare systems'.

McKinsey ready to 'dive in and start trying to help'

In 2010, the UK coalition government, led by the Conservative Party embarked on its structural reform of the NHS. The scale of the planned changes was massive: the then head of the NHS, David Nicholson famously described them as so big as to be ‘visible from space’.

A week before the health secretary, Andrew Lansley presented his controversial Health and Social Care Bill to Parliament on 19th January 2011, McKinsey executives leapt into action. In a document released under FOI dated 11 January, a consultant from McKinsey contacts key health officials with the news that: 'We now have SoS [Secretary of State] approval for me to start working with you good folks again… I’d like to dive in and start trying to help.'

McKinsey was already gathering its thinking on the implications of the reforms and had ‘started to share this with clients’, it wrote. The firm also appears to be acting as a bridge between the public and private sectors. Internal emails from the Department of Health show McKinsey connecting the capital’s health officials with one of Germany’s largest private hospital chains, Helios, to discuss ‘potential opportunities’ to take over public hospitals in London. McKinsey also advised them how to minimise public resistance to the privatisation of hospitals: start ‘from a mindset [of] one at a time,’ it warned.

In 2015 NHS England announced a new list of approved suppliers to the NHS. The list is dominated by outsourcing giants Capita; management consultancies PwC and KPMG; and US health insurer UnitedHealth. NHS England insists the companies who are bidding for contracts to supply support services to the GP-led commission groups will supply a range of back office functions, cutting procurement times and allowing doctors to focus on how best to spend their £70bn share of the NHS budget.' All of the firms are members of the Commissioning Support Industry Group, a 'low-profile body that affords them regular access to the senior NHS officials overseeing the creation of the new market in commissioning services.' Other members of the Group include management firms Ernst and Young and McKinsey who have also been awarded prominent roles.