East Lancashire college friends create groundbreaking medical agency

8:00pm Saturday 15th September 2012 in News

TWO old college friends have reinvented the way locum doctor agencies work with the aim of generating cash grants for health projects in East Lancashire.

Faisal Janjua, 40, originally from Great Harwood, the managing director of a pharmaceutical company in Birmingham, met lawyer Safraz Khan, also 40, at Accrington and Rossendale College.

Both men carry out charity work - Faisal funds the building of wells in Asia, and Safraz, of Darwen, works voluntarily as a magistrate- but decided they wanted to do more to help in Blackburn.

Faisal said: “We were both brought up in East Lancashire, and we know these are difficult times.

“We said ‘let’s make money and pump it back into the community’.

“Being in the pharmaceutical industry, I was aware that hundreds of millions are spent on locum agencies every year as a result of controls on working hours and work permit regulations, so we sat down to figure out how we could do something similar, but run differently.

“Two months ago we set up CliniCall. We’ve both pumped a lot of money into it, and have recruited three doctors.

“We charge a competitive rate for our services, but Safraz and I don’t take salaries, and every penny profit we make goes to good causes.”

This month, CliniCall has generated £500 in profit, which is being split evenly between the Royal Blackburn Hospital towards oxygen saturation monitors for the coronary care unit, and to Roe Lee Surgery, Blackburn, for new telemetry equipment.

Faisal said: “A number of doctors in the local area were skeptical at the beginning, but now they’re amazed at how well it’s going, and they’ve said that they’re proud of us.

“We don’t profess that it’s a lot of money, but every month we hope we can give out a similar amount.

“Now we’re in discussions with the Department of Health about what we have done, and how it can be rolled out further.”

Comments(3)

Rimbus says...
8:49pm Sat 15 Sep 12

Surely if this type of arrangement is making any profit the NHS are being charged too much for the provision of locum GPs. Why not just reduce the hourly rate the locums are charged out at to the level at which the project merely breaks even. We can then be sure that the NHS are getting the best possible value for money from it's spending on locums. Any charitable support for the NHS and particularly local PCTs/ Commissioning Groups is most welcome but first and foremost I think it's essential that the NHS uses it's buying power to ensure it procures the best value services available (something which has not happened in NHS procurement for many years).

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Sajdin says...
9:06pm Sat 15 Sep 12

The NHS has always had a problem on spending too much money on lucum doctors, and the hourly rates for locum consultants is much higher then the normal pay as an employee.

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Rimbus says...
9:38pm Sat 15 Sep 12

Sajdin wrote:
The NHS has always had a problem on spending too much money on lucum doctors, and the hourly rates for locum consultants is much higher then the normal pay as an employee.
Yes I know, that's why I said the NHS should concentrate on value for money procurement. It goes without saying that locum provision is far more expensive that utilising employees (regardless of the industry involved).

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