NHS in crisis

I can't disagree with you Darlo. I have friends who are nurses and doctors and they are in a frustrating position where some of the admin stuff they have to deal with could be given to a clerical worker. I suspect that the reason for cutting back office staff involved in clinical delivery is a rather mistaken way to try and show the public and the government that waste is being tackled and inefficiencies stripped out of the system.

To my mind it's just idiotic to have highly trained and well paid medical staff filling out forms. I having said that, there are probably some tasks that can only been done by proper medical staff.

Greenback said:

I can't disagree with you Darlo. I have friends who are nurses and doctors and they are in a frustrating position where some of the admin stuff they have to deal with could be given to a clerical worker.

Click to expand...

Yet we're forever being told that there are too many admin staff. That would explain why I end up doing admin in my own (unpaid) time then.

ralphchadkirk said:

Yet we're forever being told that there are too many admin staff. That would explain why I end up doing admin in my own (unpaid) time then.

Click to expand...

Quite. The trouble is that like I said earlier, more admin staff are needed for the way we do things today, despite the helping hand of technology. I don't think there's a way around that, yet newspapers and politicians tend to ignore that fact and constantly call for cutbacks in wastage and admin staff.

The irony for me is that it's usually the government, and their constant political interference, that has contributed to the waste. As an example, the Welsh government decided a few years ago to concentrate back office function sin certain areas like payroll and recruitment to a new organisation called NHS Wales Shared Services.

It was a good idea on paper and should have saved money. It probably does now but rolling out the programme was pretty costly, with money being spent on constantly changing this or that, never mind transferring people across, putting on road shows for staff, drawing up new policies for just about everything, and all the other stuff that had to be done like appointing new directors and managers.

Naturally, what happens next is that the government blames the Health Boards when the latter were never properly consulted in the first place, and were not really involved apart from being told what would be happening.

I guess the issue is that it is easier and cheaper to lay off a band F admin assistant than a band B senior clinical administration manger or a super grade Director of Administrative Services!

Why do we spend a hundred thousand pounds or more training doctors just have them to do stuff that an admin assistant could do?
Or even replacing senior administrators with senior doctors because "doctors know best".
They don't - they know how to treat individual patients, they do not necessarily have the skills necessary to keep the hospital running.

It's a bit of a muddy area to be honest. Some doctors do believe that they are the best qualified people to run hospitals, and I do agree with that view in certain instances. There are some senior roles where a medical background is essential. I can't see how a Clinical Director could not be a qualified healthcare professional, and it's similar or a position such as a Director of Nursing.

At the same time, there must be many roles where a medical background isn't necessary at all, and in those cases I tend to agree that it's a bit of a waste to have a qualified doctor engaging solely or mostly in admin and clerical tasks.

I reckon there'll always be some sort of conflict between medical professionals and non medically qualified managers. I know form personal experience, for example, that some doctors and nurses regard their own clinics as sacrosanct, and the guidelines and rules on such things as waiting lists are a waste of time and best ignored. In some cases, they are right. Clinical need should always be a factor in assessing whether some patients need to be seen sooner than others.

Nothing in the NHS is ever quite as straightforward as it appears. The same could be said for the railways!

The mess that the Commissioners are making of procurement shows what happens when you equate clinical expertise with managerial and administrative expertise. There are plenty of jobs where clinical experrtise is necessary to make the correct decision, but plenty more where it is a hindrance. You wouldn't want a doctor running the finance department, you'd want an accountant. And finance is one area where, thanks to the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, you need all these finance managers because the system is so needlessly combative and complicated. And the Commissioners are showing what happens when you don't have that knowledge: you either screw up, or you have to buy it in (for a huge fee) from the parasites at McKinsey.

Well said. I agree with you 100%.