NHS cost cutting and care
The BMJ recently published four articles to answer the question Can the NHS cut costs without substantially damaging the quality of health care? The articles: No by John Appleby, chief economist, King’s Fund No by James Owen Drife, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, Leeds General Infirmary Yes by Paul Corrigan, management consultant and former director [...]
Waste from policy or systems?
The Telegraph reports that a patient has been blocked from an operation after paying to see a consultant. The patient said: she only paid for the private consultation at Airedale Hospital because she faced a six-month wait to see the specialist So is this a problem with the policy of not allowing top-up payments or [...]
Worst call centre in Britain?
I don’t know the call centre described in this Guardian blog is the worst call centre in Britain, but I would say that it ranks pretty badly. The trouble is most of the other call centres I have had experience of are not much better. The problem stems from three things: Treating call centres as [...]
Have targets improved the NHS?
In the run up to the election the King’s Fund have written a series of articles to assist the voter to evaluate the state of the NHS. One of these is entitled, Have targets improved NHS performance? The article hedges a lot and describes the pros and cons as they see it. They list the [...]
Higher pay does NOT lead to better performance
A recent story in The Herald Scotland with the title,Managers in the NHS ‘should be paid more’ serves to illustrate the confusion over incentives, performance related pay and bonuses. The story describes a report into the pay of NHS managers in Scotland. The report also says that performance-related pay-outs have been “largely ineffective” in encouraging [...]
Appraisals aren’t about the work anymore
I just got an email from a friend of mine who works in the public sector. He says, Oh my good god! I have just received an email sent round our department offering a short course on how to fill out our appraisal forms! How crap is that? That it comes down so much to [...]
NHS A&E target "risks patient safety"
The BBC website reports what the chairman of the College of Emergency Medicine, Dr John Heyworth recently said about the 4 hour waiting target, “We’ve had nurses reduced to tears. We’ve had very senior consultants in emergency medicine threatened with a disciplinary process. “This is an outrageous misuse of the standard.” That this is being [...]
Total Recall: The Toyota Story
I just watched the BBC2 Money Programme episode about the recent problems for Toyota, which you can now watch on iPlayer (though readers not in the UK may not be able to see this). It seems it will be repeated on 31st March 2010. The programme described the current travails of Toyota, telling of the [...]
Toyota Recall Story on TV
At 21.00 on 25th March 2010 on BBC2 (a UK channel) there is a programme entitled ‘Total Recall: The Toyota Story’. Here is an extract from the description: Special edition of the Money Programme investigating Toyota’s recall of millions of cars. How did this happen to a company synonymous with reliability and customer satisfaction? Filmed [...]
Get good at the current macro system
There is a story on the BBC web site: Whitehall reorganisation ‘cost £780m in four years’, it tells how government departments are created, destroyed, merged and split at incredible speed and frequency. The same story could be told about the NHS, education, transport and within many other departments over the last 20 years. It seems [...]
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