Alpha Hospital Group is a private provider of mental health care in England, launched in 2002 by Patricia Hodgkinson, former chief executive of the Florence Nightingale Hospitals Group.

Khalid Hameed, Baron Hameed Khalid Hameed, Baron Hameed, CBE, DL (born 1 July 1941) is the chairman of Alpha Hospital Group, and chairman and chief executive officer of the London International Hospital. Prior to this, he was the Executive Director & Chief Executive O ...

is chairman of the company. It has 3 low to medium secure mental health facilities in Bury,

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

and Woking with more than 300 beds in total and employs more than 1,000 staff. In August 2015 the company was bought by

Cygnet Health Care Cygnet Health Care is an independent provider of mental health services which operates over 150 centres with more than 2,500 beds across the UK. It is a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, which acquired it for £205 million in 2014. It has ...

for £95 million. It was alleged by ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' that Sudhir Choudhrie, one of the biggest donors to the Liberal Democrats was denied a peerage because of concerns about the treatment of patients by the group. Choudhrie owned C&C Alpha Group, which owned both the Alpha Hospital Group and Alpha Care Homes. The

Care Quality Commission The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health and Social Care of the United Kingdom. It was established in 2009 to regulate and inspect health and social care services in England. I ...

inspected the hospital in Woking in February 2013 and found it had failed eight of the nine “essential standards”. In 2011 the hospital in Sheffield was said not to have sufficient numbers of the right staff. The company responded by saying "Sudhir Choudhrie does not run or manage Alpha Healthcare or Alpha Hospitals. He retired from being a director of both companies in 2007". The C&C Alpha Group business had a turnover of £89 million in the year to April 2013 and employed more than 1,300 staff. In July 2014 ''

the Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' published a correction, saying there was no evidence to suggest that his peerage was blocked because concerns about Alpha. The '' Morning Star'' described the company in January 2014 as representing "some of the worst of NHS privatisation", and pointing out that "all three of Alpha's private mental health hospitals that were inspected by the Care Quality Commission in 2013 failed to meet some standards." The

made unannounced visits in November and December 2013 to the hospital in Woking found it was failing to meet five out of the six national standards of quality and safety and issued formal warnings in respect of three of them – care and welfare of people, safeguarding people from abuse, and records as they had already been told that they needed to make a number of improvements during two previous visits. The company takes NHS patients from across England at a cost of up to £1,150 a day. 21 patients from Yorkshire were placed in the Bury hospital between April 2013 and March 2015. The

inspected the hospital in Bury in February 2015. It found that the seclusion rooms, where patients are calmed or restrained, were dirty and not equipped with adequate washing facilities or natural light. Alpha Hospital Group was acquired in 2015 by

, owned by

Universal Health Services Universal Health Services, Inc. (UHS) is an American Fortune 500 company that provides hospital and healthcare services, based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. In 2021, its annual revenues were $12.6 billion. Company history Alan B. Miller, ...

, a

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

-based hospital management company.

References

{{reflist, 2 Mental health organisations in the United Kingdom Private providers of NHS services Health in Surrey Health in Greater Manchester Health in Sheffield

See also

References