Operose Health director Omar Din questionned by councillors in Islington last week

A TOP boss of the company at the centre of Islington’s GP surgery takeover controversy has faced a grilling by a council committee – but denied the deal has left practices understaffed and inaccessible.

Omar Din, the managing director of both AT Medics and Operose Health, was involved in a testy exchange with councillors.

The two companies merged last year and are now running two practices in Islington – Mitchison Road and Hanley Medical Practice – and four in Camden. The next contracts for the two Islington surgeries are due to be decided next month.

The fact that Operose is wholly owned by US health giants the Centene Corporation led to complaints at the time that control of the services was being shifted without public debate. Questioned at Islington Town Hall on Thursday night, Mr Din heard one patient tell him it was easier to go “DIY doctoring on Google” than get an appointment with a GP face-to-face.

And guest speaker, the Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, told him: “My concern is you are building up a large presence in the NHS. But by building that up you are developing a private sector parallel to the NHS. I don’t want to see that.”

The former Labour Party leader asked whether patients’ data was being sent on to Centene.

Mr Din said: “The US has no access to the data stored in the UK. The only purpose we use that data for is for patient care. We have no other motive.”

“We do not supply data to the US for any reasons. We don’t do that, we won’t do that.”

Speaking of the Centene takeover, he added: “No one tells me what to do differently to what I was doing 18 months ago.”

Mr Din was asked to counter allegations that surgeries employ “physician associates” instead of fully trained doctors and the scrutiny committee’s chairwoman Councillor Jenny Kay told him: “You have more receptionists and administrators at both of your surgeries listed on your website than you have clinical staff.”

Mr Din told the meeting that 17 “full time equivalent” GPs were working in the two Islington surgeries run by his company, adding: “That is at least as many as other GPs.”

When Cllr Kay pointed out his websites listed two GPs working at each of these surgeries, he said: “We will go away and quality assess that.”

Mr Din said he wanted to “set the record straight” over a BBC Panorama investigation earlier this year that he described as an “entertainment programme” and “certainly not a source of credible data”.

When asked what he had taken away from the programme, he said there was a need to “tighten HR processes” to prevent undercover reporters getting jobs in his surgeries in the future.

Mr Din said he should be judged on Care Quality Commission reports that overall suggested the vast majority of surgeries run by Operose / AT Medics are currently rated good or outstanding.

Surgeries takeover: the story so far…

THE Tribune revealed in February 2021 how a US-owned company had become the largest provider of primary care in the UK – without many patients or politicians even knowing.

Overnight and with no public debate or consultation, AT Medics – which had contracts at Mitchison Road and Hanley Medical Practice – had merged with a firm wholly owned by the Centene Corporation in the United States.

Even some councillors were shocked to only learn about the change in control in the pages of our newspaper.

Concerns about how the Centene Corpora­tion could influence the NHS further down the road were later raised in the Houses of Parliament and there was a protest outside Operose offices. Later, a case was taken to the High Court in a judicial review brought by a patient, the Labour councillor Anjna Khurana.

Lawyers argued that there should have been an open consultation but the case was lost.
An undercover investigative documentary the BBC aired in June – the findings of which are disputed by AT Medics and Operose.