AN Oxford hospital trust has denied accusations of a ‘shocking’ lack of support for staff speaking out over plans to privatise PET-CT scans.

The future of the Churchill Hospital’s cancer scanning was put in doubt after private firm InHealth was named in March as the preferred bidder to take it over from Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

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A meeting was organised by the National Union of Journalist’s Oxford branch this week over the trust being warned in a letter from NHS England that staff faced being sued for defamation if they suggested patient safety would suffer as a result.

Oxford Mail:

Professor of medical oncology at Oxford University and former lead for breast oncology at OUH Adrian Harris, speaking at the event on Thursday, said: “There has been a shocking lack of support for consultants who just want to look after patients.”

The trust, however, refuted this saying it was ‘united’ with staff and the board had worked closely with clinicians to ‘voice collective concerns’ about the impact of the proposed changes.

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A spokesman added as soon as the trust learned about InHealth’s successful bid it wrote to the chairman of the Oxfordshire Joint Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC) to ask the committee to take up the issue. The committee referred the matter to the Health Secretary Matt Hancock for review but earlier this month the Government said it would not look at the case, citing ongoing partnership discussions between NHS England, the trust and InHealth.

Mr Harris, however, said this partnership was ‘solving a problem that doesn’t exist’ and said he believed InHealth did not currently have the resources to ensure the same quality of service was maintained.

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Under InHealth’s initial proposals inpatients at the Churchill would have been forced to travel by ambulance to the GenesisCare centre in Littlemore but following a backlash this was scrapped.

The vital scans, which help doctors diagnose cancer, or see how treatment is working, have been based at the Churchill since 2005.

A spokesman for NHS England referred to a letter sent to HOSC on Monday, which said comments about defamation were 'merely intending to alert the trust' to the potential for others, including clinicians involved in evaluating the bids, to 'seek redress' for any 'unsubstantiated allegations made publicly'.