Harmoni was a provider of outsourced healthcare services including
Out-of-hours service
Out-of-hours services are the arrangements to provide access to healthcare at times when General Practitioner surgeries are closed; in the United Kingdom this is normally between 6.30pm and 8am, at weekends, at Bank Holidays and sometimes if the ...
s,
NHS 111
111 is a free-to-call single non-emergency number medical helpline operating in England, Scotland and parts of Wales. The 111 phone service has replaced the various non-geographic 0845 rate numbers and is part of each country's National Health S ...
, prisoner healthcare and IT services. It provided NHS services to more than eight million people in the UK.
It was created by a merger of
ECI healthcare investment's WCI Group’s IT services division and the Harmoni GP cooperative. It was the most successful out-of-hours provider in winning the Government’s
NHS 111
111 is a free-to-call single non-emergency number medical helpline operating in England, Scotland and parts of Wales. The 111 phone service has replaced the various non-geographic 0845 rate numbers and is part of each country's National Health S ...
contracts in 2012.
It was sold in 2012 by
ECI Partners
ECI Partners is a growth focused private equity group based in the UK and the US, first established by the Bank of England in 1976.
ECI typically invests up to £100m of equity (as part of an initial transaction) in businesses valued at up to ...
to
Care UK
Care UK is a provider of residential care for older people. They operate more than 150 homes offering residential care, dementia care, and nursing care. The company formerly also operated a wider range of healthcare services until 2019 when ...
for about £50 million.
The company claimed that it made no profit out of the out-of-hours market. The Chair of Camden's Health Scrutiny Panel said the company won the Out-of-hours contract for Camden not on quality, but on price. They described the service as a
loss-leader
A loss leader (also leader) is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below its market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods or services. With this sales promotion/marketing strategy, a "leader" is any popular articl ...
. It lost the contract for Hackney to the
GP co-operative, City and Hackney Urgent Healthcare Social Enterprise in October 2013.
References
{{reflist
Private providers of NHS services
Health care companies of the United Kingdom
2012 mergers and acquisitions