BENEFITS hmmmm

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Studio25

The NHS is like any organisation - you have a bunch of people at the top telling the ones on the front line to work harder/faster/cheaper.

I've said before, the easy solution for the NHS is to wipe out 80% of the administrative layer and put much of the control back in the hands of the people giving the care. With all the savings from axed executive salaries, you can afford to allow wards to operate with more than the minimum safe staffing levels, and operate with sufficient slack that if there is a sudden need for extra care, there's the capacity on hand to deal with it.

If you bring in managers from business to run the NHS, you bring in a "just in time" mindset where any underutilised capacity is a bad thing. The NHS isn't there to make a profit, it's there to either cure people or to make the final hours or days of those who are at the end of their life as comfortable and dignified as possible. That can't be done with a spreadsheet.

At a hospital like Blackburn how many actual jobs do you think you could wipe out in administration without causing problems to the running of the hospital? It's ok saying such things but you probably have no idea how many administrators and managers there actually are that you want to sack because you assume they are not contributing anything.

[Margaret Pilkington]

I don't know how many there are right now.....but there were too many in my day Neil.

[Studio25]

Originally Posted by Neil

At a hospital like Blackburn how many actual jobs do you think you could wipe out in administration without causing problems to the running of the hospital? It's ok saying such things but you probably have no idea how many administrators and managers there actually are that you want to sack because you assume they are not contributing anything.

Like I said - 80%

You probably have no idea how much documentation nurses have to do to fulfil administrative requirements, rather than spend time actually caring for your sick or dying loved one. (If you're interested in the figure, it's 80% - and only a small fraction of that is documentation of administered drugs, fluid balance charts, observations etc. The rest is designed to cover the trust in case they get sued. It's more "important" for a nurse to tick a box to indicate that they have performed a task than it is to actually perform the task.)

I'm married to a nurse, and I'm close friends with three others. The only way I could be better qualified to comment on the state of the NHS is if I actually worked there.

One of the nurses I know has recently had to go through the process of proving her identity to the admin team. She's worked in the same trust for 30 years!

If this were Golgafrincham, these are the people who would have been on the "B" Ark.

[Margaret Pilkington]

I love your analogy.....and yes they would be on the B ark.....most definitely.

[accyman]

Originally Posted by cashman

The money is limited no question, also beyond doubt its run by knobheads.

the simple solution would be to make the scottish , welsh and irish pay for their medicine just like good old England does

i find it sickening that cuts to our NHS are been made in england while every other country in the UK gets free prescriptions even if they are millionairs.

its about time the rest of the UK started pulling its weight and started putting their hand in their pockets to pay for prescriptions just like many people in England have to

maybe we wouldnt have postecode lottery's for life saving drugs if teh rest of the UK paid their way instead of leeching off England a country they seem to dislike and want to have Independence from