BECAUSE THEY ARE WORTH IT?
By David Vance On May 31st, 2011Recession? What recession?
It emerged last month that the bonuses of senior executives at the Department of Health had doubled in five years. Some received £27,500 on top of their six-figure salaries. And around 1,600 managers of hospitals and health trusts are now earning in excess of £150,000 a year, more than the Prime Minister’s salary of £142,500.
It gets better…
“Strategic health authority managers have pension pots between £1.2m and £2.6m. Average private sector worker would have to work 1,720 years to accrue same amount…”
Ain’t life grand when you work for the State? Again, if you DARE to criticise the NHS you are branded a wrecker! Wrecking vested interests, I would suggest!!
And yet these individuals play no part in the diagnosis or therapy of sick people nor do they make the patients comfortable. They do not feed the patients or play an invovled part in delivering hotel services. Should there be a cross infection outbreak outbreak it is other professionals who search for and identify the offending bacteria or virus. All these tasks are undertaken by the nursing, medical and the clinical scientific staff in employ and supported by the cleaners, cooks, porters, secretaries, clerks and other administrative staff.
Now I believe that the organisation structure of the NHS does need urgent attention because a bureaucratic organisation structure cannot fulfill the needs of a highly complex and technical undertaking which plies its expertise in an ever changing dynamic environment. One would think that this is where these very well paid managers would find an appropriate niche to fill – but do they?
David asks the question “Because the are worth it?” Well are they?
I think it was Mrs Thatcher who introduced an internal market of competing public-sector providers into the NHS..which of course required managers to manage it.
Q1. How many people want to work themselves out of a job?
Q2. Was it successful?
Answers.
1. None
2. No, it didn’t.
All done with the best of intentions, but whenever extra management are brought in, so is more bureaucracy and paperwork.
How do they make it work on the continent?