NHS Mangers and Management

Clinical staff aside, who would take a job in NHS management or administration, especially in the lower and mid reaches of this management structure? You only have to look at recent public consultation exercises to relaise what a difficult job this is.

What targets do these people have, what is the management structure in the NHS what is their pay structure, do people in the NHS ever get the sack? Some difficult questions there but one area where there is no public consultation

Lets take the admin staff, the people that work on the front desks and back offices. What training do they get, what incentives. If their pay is low, what calibre of candidate is attracted to these posts. My experience is mixed, at my local hospital I have been met by some fantastic staff, whilst in London by people that really couldn’t be bothered. Surely these people should be paid more, trained more given acceptable targets and have a simple disciplinary procedure that removes them from post if they can’t do their job properly.

I am a union person through and through, but everyone even union members needs to understand that we all have lines of responsibility and accountability that we must live up to. Standards of politeness of ability to give information and so on.

But what of NHS management…

“The New NHS: A Guide: A Guide to Its Funding, Organisation and Accountability” (Allyson M. Pollock, Alison Talbot-Smith)

Is NHS management in disarray, its often said that most of the money pumped into the NHS by Mr Brown (now the Prime Minister) went on wages and it is true to say that wages are the biggest cost that the NHS has. Yes Nurses have increased their pay perhaps to levels that they should have been years ago and Doctors across the board have increased their pay with no obvious link to targets or productivity. We are often told how many doctors or nurses there now are….but how many managers were there and how many are there now? David Cameron reckons there has been a massive increase in the management tier of the NHS and many people I know who work in the NHs would echo this. But is it really true?

My inside information tells me many of these posts are not well paid compared to the private sector equivalent, so what kinds of candidates are they attracting? Lets hope totally committed professional ones…well there must be some of these and I know some. However very often there are also people who seem to have failed in some other area of health care and be sideways moved into management. I have been told in some instances managers job descriptions specifies certain achievements or qualifications but these are not adhered to.

Now I am not denying there are many committed people working in the Public services, but they in many ways cover for the incompetents. Those that work their day off, or put in hundreds of unpaid extra hours to ensure patients are seen and looked after…these people are feeding the problem. Their committment allows the no hopers not to be found out. And beleive me for the NHS to be leaving dead babies in plastic bags by a mothers bed side there must be a fair amount of no hopers.

Why aren’t these people sacked. They wouldn’t last 5 minutes in a private sector job, are they hiding their inadequacies in the NHS and putting our lives at risk.

My inside information tells me there are often dual lines of management where groups and teams are managed by two different people or where hospitals second people from other areas, they keep their previous manager, so 3 people can manage the same team, one for a secondmenrt, one for clincal work and one for admin (holidays paperwork etc). How inefficient is that?

All of this is anecdotal and perhasp asks more questions that it answers, but before we go blaming nurses and doctors we need to ask about NHs management and administration, who is employed, what they’re paid, what they do, what are their job descriptions and targets, can they be sacked if they aren’t any good. Why are they there in the first place.

“Managing Multi-Disciplinary Teams In The NHS (Health Care Management)” (GORMAN)