The entity responsible for the Compass hospital food contract has changed its tune on revealing more details of the controversial 15-year agreement.
Amid a probe by Chief Ombudsman Judge Peter Boshier into a decision to withhold the information, Government entity NZ Health Partnerships said it reconsidered the matter and believed much of it could now be released.
That was two weeks ago, but after final consultation, NZHP engagement and human resources general manager Steve Fisher told the Otago Daily Times the information was commercially sensitive.
"The redacted terms, when looked at in their entirety, create a commercial package that enable Compass Group to provide a total service at a certain price and quality level for DHBs.
"If further information was released it would enable competitors to reverse-engineer many aspects of the Compass offer.
"For example, if a competitor knew all the key performance indicator requirements in the contract they could simply offer to do something slightly faster or more regularly to win the DHB’s business."
It is hoped some of the 14 DHBs that shied away from the deal will still sign, thus reducing the cost for participating boards. Compass would be less able to do a deal with other boards if its position was compromised, Mr Fisher said.
Early this month, Canterbury District Health Board confirmed it would not be signing, and would save millions of dollars over time by having its food service in-house.
The move by the South Island’s most powerful DHB put the controversial deal signed by Southern DHB in 2015 back in the spotlight.
Nearly two years on, SDHB is still wrangling with Compass over pricing, and has no final "savings" figure yet. Initial projected savings of $7 million over 15 years was the key attraction for the cash-strapped DHB, but that had to be renegotiated because few DHBs joined. This month, SDHB chief executive Chris Fleming said negotiations were "progressing well".
Dunedin South MP Clare Curran said there was "high public interest" in the contract and NZHP’s argument was "spurious".
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Very spurious. I can't believe that KPI are not public or known to competing bidders. Surely, they are the performance indicators required and if a company cannot meet them then their contract does not compete. It makes no sense to me to say, put your bid in and we will compare on price but not on expected standards to be achieve. Surely, without KPI as part of the contract price evaluation it would be lucky if even comparing apples with oranges.
Basically, corporate welfare is more important than actual peoples' welfare is the argument. It's way beyond being 'spurious' Clare.