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The solution to the NHS crisis is to sack the useless managers
• AS a junior doctor who works locally and who trained
at The Royal Free Hospital I read with despair the latest news
about job cuts and bed closures (500 jobs to go at the Free,
March 23).
The concept that greater efficiency will be found by reducing
the number of highly skilled and hard working clinical and support
workers and replacing them with more layers of bloated management
is totally ridiculous.
When, despite assurances to the contrary, compulsory redundancies
are announced I would hope that in light of his dire record
the chief executive Andrew Way will be amongst the first to
go.
After years of Conservative under investment in the NHS the
increased spending of the current government seemed like a welcome
relief. Unfortunately this opportunity has been squandered by
incompetent management, increased bureaucracy and overzealous
targets. I hope that the ethos of public service does not continue
to be buried beneath the current reforms.
Dr Edward Haworth
Upper Park Rd, NW3
• I READ your editorial attack on the government’s
health policies with interest (March 23 2006). I believe that
you are failing the national interest by not putting yourselves
forward as alternative managers of the NHS. It appears self
evident that your obvious expertise in this area is being wasted
on the production of a mere local paper.
David Curran
Meadow Road
Berkhamsted
Herts
• CRISIS at the Free: since the Government doesn’t
know what’s gone wrong with the NHS, surely it’s time
to ask someone else – the medical staff.
This could take the form of a questionnaire, issued to every
nurse and doctor in the country – but none of the managers.
Handled by an independent body, done hospital by hospital, it
need only ask three questions: what’s wrong with how your
department is run? How would you put it right? And how can the
NHS overall be brought back to health?
Obviously the replies wouldn’t all be pearls of wisdom,
but there’d be enough.
There’s still a lot of dedicated people in the NHS, but
their views are ignored. Views far more relevant, that is, than
the opinions of remote bureaucrats, or the shifting deceits
and evasions of the politicians. Once the replies were collected,
we’d begin to see a way forward – yet it’s easy
to make guesses already.
The NHS may be the largest employer in the UK, but it’s
also become the largest bureaucracy.
Indeed, the largest growth area since the seventies has been
admin – a prime demonstration of bureaucracy growing of
its’ own accord, regardless of any real need.
Isn’t that the main problem? That the whole infrastructure
has grown out of all control, becoming so multiple, so convoluted,
that no one can see the whole picture anymore.
Surely the medical staff would suggest massive redundancies
among the suits – who are useful only by their own standards-
slashing admin back to the levels of the sixties. Then, after
a period of adjustment, would anyone notice the loss?
Clearly the suits would resist this to the death, for it’s
their own cosy jobs on the line – yet what’s the alternative?
Far as it’s going we’ll have – in a decade, say
– even more managers running hospitals full of wards, closed
to save money.
That’s why we pay taxes, isn’t it?
Jack Smith
Fellows Road
NW3
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