WAG's Home oxygen annual £4m overspend is a "national disgrace" - Randerson

12.01.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 24th Jul 2008

Jenny Randerson warned some time ago that the oxygen contract was in a mess

Welsh Lib Dem Spokesperson for Health Jenny Randerson AM has launched a strong attack on the Welsh Assembly Government's handling of the Home Oxygen contract in Wales and branded the affair a "national disgrace" following the publication of the Wales Audit Office's report into the service. The report found that the NHS was massively under-prepared for the introduction of the new contract with Air Products PLC and that the new system failed "almost immediately."

The report follows the uncovering of figures by Jenny Randerson back in October, revealing massive overspends in supplying home oxygen under the new budget. Today's report reveals the full extent of this overspend, costing the taxpayer £6m per year compared to the original estimate of just £2m.

Jenny Randerson said: "The handling of the oxygen contract has been a national disgrace. While I accept that the Government has a responsibility of finding new ways to make services work better, this system has completely failed due to a lack of planning by WAG that is bordering on negligent. The old system where community pharmacies provided home oxygen was replaced because WAG felt it was costing too much but the new system has cost even more after emergency measures had to be taken to actually deliver the life saving products to patients.

"There have been none of the anticipated benefits of specialist clinical assessment of patient need, and none of the cost saving promises have been realised.

"When I revealed the figures last year, I was shocked by the scale of the overspend. This report proves that it is even worse than I thought. An overspend that is twice the size of the total budget is not just a sign of incompetence, it is disgraceful."

"WAG must think very hard about whether this system will serve patients effectively in the future, or whether it would actually be better to return to a system where community pharmacists provide the services that are often a matter of life and death."