I’ve seen where some of the money goes this week. The midwives visiting my daughter’s newly born breastfed twins have been obliged to follow a protocol that prompts them to call a hotline to speak to a neonatal paediatrician, even where they have no concerns with the health of the babies. Undermining the clinical judgement of the midwives, a highly paid paediatrician is sitting at the end of the phone waiting for calls, many of which will be unnecessary, as in the case of my daughter’s healthy babies.
So on average, each NHS England member of staff received (very roughly) £80,000 in redundancy.
At these rates if everybody in NHS England left it would cost us nearly a billion pounds (£0.8 billion). To put this into context Integrated Care Boards pass about £95 billion to NHS Trusts and other providers to pay for NHS clinical care each year.
"Meanwhile, front line staff face increasing levels of monitoring, mandatory training, and additional tasks that take them away from direct patient care."
In part this might explain why in 2020/21, the productivity of the health care sector in England fell by 23% (in part due to pandemic disruption). A more recent analysis of the acute sector by NHS England suggested that productivity in 2023/24 was still 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
Some assert that the growth of the influence of NHS England is one factor which has undermined healthcare productivity in the UK.
I would take issue with the claim that taking a 'corporate approach' should lead to more layers of management. Corporate implies private sector, most corporates are pretty good at flattening organisation structures (except for HR, where they seem to have taken the koolade). I would contest that, as someone, Weber, Sowell, Parkinson? said, bureaucracies expand by 4% a year regardless of the task they're supposed to be doing.
I wonder if the reduced staff simply find themselves deployed to another part of the organisation.
We had a well run, profitable veterinary hospital. It was eventually bought by the Mars cooperation. You would not believe the layers of bureaucracy that were added. A few layers of people who did not add anything to the actual work the hospital was doing, just sat in endless meetings…
Has anything been proposed along the lines that those responsible for the blatant Empire Building in NHS England should be held financially to account for their incompetence and greed?
Of course, Britain is the nursery of socialism. It was no accident that Karl Marx composed his manifesto in the bowels (Reading Room) of the British Museum (now the Library). This resulted from the fact that Britain was the home of the Industrial Revolution, in which the whole of human civilisation was re-envisioned. What once had been imagined as a village centred on a dear little church and infused with Divine Love, became a giant Factory, managed on strictly rational principles, to ensure maximum control of 'the means of production'. Medicine and medical care changed along with everything else - and so you have the NHS.
I’ve seen where some of the money goes this week. The midwives visiting my daughter’s newly born breastfed twins have been obliged to follow a protocol that prompts them to call a hotline to speak to a neonatal paediatrician, even where they have no concerns with the health of the babies. Undermining the clinical judgement of the midwives, a highly paid paediatrician is sitting at the end of the phone waiting for calls, many of which will be unnecessary, as in the case of my daughter’s healthy babies.
Thank you both💖💖👍👍👏👏
So on average, each NHS England member of staff received (very roughly) £80,000 in redundancy.
At these rates if everybody in NHS England left it would cost us nearly a billion pounds (£0.8 billion). To put this into context Integrated Care Boards pass about £95 billion to NHS Trusts and other providers to pay for NHS clinical care each year.
"Meanwhile, front line staff face increasing levels of monitoring, mandatory training, and additional tasks that take them away from direct patient care."
In part this might explain why in 2020/21, the productivity of the health care sector in England fell by 23% (in part due to pandemic disruption). A more recent analysis of the acute sector by NHS England suggested that productivity in 2023/24 was still 11% lower than pre-pandemic levels.
Some assert that the growth of the influence of NHS England is one factor which has undermined healthcare productivity in the UK.
I would take issue with the claim that taking a 'corporate approach' should lead to more layers of management. Corporate implies private sector, most corporates are pretty good at flattening organisation structures (except for HR, where they seem to have taken the koolade). I would contest that, as someone, Weber, Sowell, Parkinson? said, bureaucracies expand by 4% a year regardless of the task they're supposed to be doing.
I wonder if the reduced staff simply find themselves deployed to another part of the organisation.
I think it depends.
We had a well run, profitable veterinary hospital. It was eventually bought by the Mars cooperation. You would not believe the layers of bureaucracy that were added. A few layers of people who did not add anything to the actual work the hospital was doing, just sat in endless meetings…
Has anything been proposed along the lines that those responsible for the blatant Empire Building in NHS England should be held financially to account for their incompetence and greed?
Oh.
I thought not.
Of course, Britain is the nursery of socialism. It was no accident that Karl Marx composed his manifesto in the bowels (Reading Room) of the British Museum (now the Library). This resulted from the fact that Britain was the home of the Industrial Revolution, in which the whole of human civilisation was re-envisioned. What once had been imagined as a village centred on a dear little church and infused with Divine Love, became a giant Factory, managed on strictly rational principles, to ensure maximum control of 'the means of production'. Medicine and medical care changed along with everything else - and so you have the NHS.