Doctors and activists across London have staged a protest against the purchase of 50 practices by a well-connected giant US health insurance company.

Some 49 practices in the capital have been sold to an offshoot of the Centene Corporation. The medical trade union, Doctors in Unite, says the pace of privatisation of the NHS is accelerating because of sales such as these. Centene acquired the practices by taking over a GP-owned company, AT Medics, earlier this year, through its subsidiary Operose Health Ltd. Operose already owned 22 practices around the UK, including an urgent care centre.

At about the same time, its chief executive Ms Samantha Jones, a former nurse, announced her departure to become a health adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

The campaigners say the latest sales increase the risk of NHS services becoming part of a globalised health market. AT Medics was already a private health company, set up by six GPs in London. Its practice contracts are thought to be worth £121 million. The protests last week were attended by several prominent London politicians as well as doctors and other campaigners, including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Dr Jackie Applebee, chair of Doctors in Unite, said: “Ministers and senior NHS executives have repeatedly mouthed the mantra that the NHS is not being privatised. But now we have the case of a huge swathe of English general practice, including the data of nearly half a million patients, being handed over to US health insurance giant Centene – with a breath-taking lack of transparency and openness.

“Tory politicians and their outriders in the media roll out the tired old trope that all general practices are private, but this is disingenuous and they know it. There is a world of difference between a multinational corporation that operates to make a profit, often by cutting staff and services, so that it can pay dividends to shareholders, and local GPs who are very much part of the NHS ‘family’ and provide services from a budget fixed by the Treasury. The public needs to wake-up to the fact the NHS that they so value and which has been the lynchpin of the successful vaccination programme is being steadily sold off to profit-hungry healthcare companies – in this case one whose headquarters is in America.”

Earlier this year the Camden New Journal reported Ms Jones appointment to 10 Downing Street.

Dr Nick Harding, chief medical officer at Operose Health, told the journal: “Samantha Jones lives and breathes the National Health Service. Beginning as a student paediatric nurse, she has gone on to be an NHS hospital chief executive, lead primary care services and pioneer a national programme to improve NHS services for all patients. Her story demonstrates an ability to both bring frontline experience to the corridors of power and her immense personal potential to take on difficult challenges and succeed. As Britain looks to a post-Covid crisis future, there is no one better qualified to help shape health policy.”