More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Additional reporting by Luke Vance Barr
“This is a company that is supposed to be helping the disabled - they just don’t want to know.”
That is the damning testimony of a Maidstone grandmother’s experience with Millbrook Healthcare - the wheelchair service provider upon which she is completely reliant.
Now an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has revealed 14 of the top 30 worst performing wheelchair services for waiting times over the last two years are run by Millbrook.
The mobility company won a lucrative contract from Kent’s clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) - which buy and plan healthcare around the county - worth £6.2million a year back in 2017.
However, seemingly with each passing month, there is another vulnerable person expressing their woe at the service received by Millbrook.
At three different CCGs, over the last two years, half of all users failed to get their wheelchairs from the company within 18 weeks.
Across the country, it serves more than 120,000 people with spinal injuries or life-changing disabilities - about 10% of all wheelchair users in the UK.
The 68-year-old also tragically lost her husband, Ronald, aged 82, on Christmas Day, and so recent times have been extremely tough for the family.
Mrs Norris uses a motorised wheelchair but was left waiting more than a year for Millbrook to deliver an arm rest between 2017 and 2018, and is now again chasing repairs, this time for a broken footrest.
“They’re completely useless,” she said. “It’s a really testing time for us recently, and things are still moving very, very slowly. You’re just waiting for the parts and you don’t know when they are going to be done, it could be another six months, who knows?
“The swelling in my feet is bad - I’m supposed to be putting my legs up but at the moment they’re just hanging down and it creates a lot of pressure and pain.
“You have to keep chasing them and it can be incredibly demoralising.”
Professor Mike Oliver of the Kent Wheelchair Users Group, who died in March, previously said the service was “worse now than it has ever been in the 56 years I have used it.” Privatised wheelchair services have “compounded problems” for disabled people, he said.
The IT salesman made a formal complaint last summer but had heard nothing from the mobility company until they were contacted by this newspaper for a response.
The buggy eventually did arrive, and Millbrook staff now go into Mia May’s school to make modifications to it where necessary, but the experience left Mr McDonald frustrated.
“The thing that worries me is that she’s getting bigger and soon she’ll need an actual wheelchair rather than the pram, and it’s going to be a question of how long that’ll take to arrive,” he said.
“At the time we literally had nothing, just a normal high street pram to move her around in and we probably waited a year for it to arrive.
“During that time it was extremely painful for all of us.”
Meanwhile, University of Kent student Lucy Hudson described her experience with the company as “horrific”.
She waited eight months for the joystick controller on her electric powerchair to be fixed, during which it was held together by sellotape and cable ties.
The batteries on her five-year-old chair then began to deplete, with Millbrook taking over a month to provide replacements, leaving the 24-year-old housebound for weeks.
An NHS’ wheelchair charter, drawn up by campaigners in 2015 and adopted by NHS England, promises that access and provision to equipment should be the same for everyone “irrespective of age or postcode”.
It states that users with “complex, long-term conditions need to be able to access the right wheelchair quickly and with appropriate support.”
However, data from the BIJ shows only five CCGs in England met the 18-week waiting time for all patients in 2017/18.
When Millbrook was awarded the Kent and Medway contract, it was already struggling to deal with a backlog of wheelchair assessments in Hampshire, and raised concerns about a “larger than expected inherited caseload” within months of taking over here.
The service already had 40% of people waiting beyond the 18-week threshold. Under Millbrook, that rose to 50%.
The company’s initial evidence on the backlog “was not conclusive”, according to health chiefs, who were unable to rule out the possibility they underbid during the procurement process, though CCG bosses insist the original bid was “sound, based on the information available at that time”and given that demand appeared to increase in the weeks and months after.
Despite a growing reputational problem, Millbrook has still retained business and was even awarded a series of contract extensions last year.
Responding to the bureau, Millbrook said it has, in a number of cases, inherited contracts with significant, undeclared waiting lists from previous providers, often without enough funding to meet the growing demand.
It said health chiefs provided more resources to help clear backlogs in key areas, including Kent, and said it continues to work with commissioners to review the increasing demands placed on its services.
A spokesperson added: “The 18 week target mentioned by the bureau currently only applies to the children’s pathway, however in all cases service users are clinically triaged and prioritised based on clinical need.
“It is important to note that the Kent and Medway contract is entirely separate to the Hampshire one, with each being separately tendered and won on its own merit in line with NHS procurement practice.
“Each area has local staff teams and infrastructure support.”
A spokesperson for Thanet CCG said: “We recognise that not all service users are receiving the services that they deserve, we are sorry about this and working hard with Millbrook and their users, to implement an improvement plan that addresses the problems.
“We are reassured that this plan has already produced significant improvement and will continue to do so over the forthcoming months.”
