Healthcare Act 2022 Competition Issues
The Health and Care Act 2022 (Act) has been published following
Royal Assent on 28 April. This represents a significant rolling back of the
competition law provisions which were present in previous legislation.
The Act repeals competition law provisions that were
introduced by the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
The Act provides for the functions of the health regulator,
Monitor (now operating as NHS Improvement) to be transferred to NHS England.
Although NHS England will be obliged to assist the
Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and provide it with regulatory
information, the regulator’s concurrent competition law powers are removed.
The Act also removes the role of the CMA in reviewing
mergers between certain NHS entities and the CMA will no longer have a role in
relation to contested licence conditions.
The Act also revokes the Procurement, Patient Choice and
Competition Regulations 2013, which governed the commissioning of health care
services for the purposes of the NHS. The Chief Executive of NHS England has stated
that competitive tendering can create “frictional cost and dislocation”.
The Act makes provision for new regulations on procurement
and on patient choice to be made.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2022/31/pdfs/ukpga_20220031_en.pdf
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