The man in charge of the county’s hospitals has shared details of a “peculiar” WhatsApp message he received - asking him if he was interested in SELLING Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust.

“This is a first,” Neil Macdonald, CEO of Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust, wrote on Twitter – as he shared a screenshot of a random WhatsApp message he received over the weekend.

The message, which refers to Mr Macdonald by name, asks if he is “open to selling Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust”.

The WhatsApp appears to have been sent by someone who works for General Health Group, which, according to Google, is a “healthcare consolidation consortium” based out of New York and Switzerland.

Their website says they are a “leading and innovative investment firm taking the charge to synergize the highly fragmented healthcare industry” by investing in “small to mid-size healthcare practices like yours and [taking] them to the next level of profitability”.

While many people found the notion of Mr Macdonald even being able to sell Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust funny, some raised concerns about the “selling off” of the NHS.

“What did you get for it, out of interest?”, one person responded on Twitter.

“Couldn’t find the certificate of ownership,” Mr Macdonald wrote back.

Another branded it “bizarre”, asking: “What is it worth, do you reckon,”, with Mr Macdonald replying that it is “priceless”.

“Got to love a trier,” another Twitter user laughed.

But one person said there was a more serious side to the message. Jon Garfield wrote: “This might be good for a laugh but there’s also a cautionary tale.

“The website for the company making the ‘offer’ shows a team of retired execs from some of the big US healthcare corporations that now dominate American healthcare, and that’s no laughing matter.”

Another person said: “Yep I received same email this morning presumably because I’ve got NHS in my LinkedIn profile.

"It’s quite depressing receiving it. Feels like vultures circling.”

The chief executive's tweet was liked more than 3,300 times and retweeted by more than 850 accounts as people shared their disbelief at the message. 

Mr Macdonald promptly blocked the person who sent the message in the early hours of Saturday morning - but the Bucks Free Press has contacted General Health Group to ask for more details and clarification about their intentions and we’ll update this story if we get a response.