The private cancer diagnostic and treatment company Rutherford Health has been placed into liquidation. Only eight months ago the opening of a new community diagnostics hub (CDH) within a partnership between the company’s subsidiary Rutherford Diagnostics and the NHS’s Somerset Foundation Trust (SFT) was heralded as “game-changing” for the trust’s capacity to carry out diagnostics.
The new stand-alone CDH, opened by Sir Mike Richards, the author of the 2020 report that pushed the idea of CDHs to expand diagnostic capacity, was part of a five year partnership deal with SFT begun in July 2020 (with the option to extend to ten years).
The centre was to provide diagnostic services including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), Ultrasound and X-Ray using equipment provided by Rutherford’s technology partner, Philips, in an effort to reduce the significant waiting lists for such procedures.
Rutherford Health has other contracts with the NHS – its four cancer centres treat private and NHS patients and it also holds a two-year “framework agreement” with NHS England for cancer care.
Full story in The Lowdown, 8 June 2022
