When the NHS is struggling to make ends meet how can they justify this?

Ooops meant to add. Now we know where the money that should be being used to treat patients, is really going !

Definitely needs an enquiry - that will cost! But if there are people earning these sorts of sums while patients are being refused cancer treatment, this cannot be allowed to continue.

I agree Mishap. It makes me so angry. Our own NHS trust (South Tyneside) is one of the worst offenders too. I wonder how many vital operations could be performed or lifesaving drugs administered on one of their pension pots alone?

Very very

Quite. As I said across a couple of threads a few weeks ago, admin and management costs in the NHS very much needs to be looked at. One or two posters said that admin frees up frontline staff.
I beg to differ. One has nothing to do with the other. And quite how many admin and management staff are needed and at what costs?

*Brendawymms Wed 07-Jan-15 08:37:52
When I joined the NHS management overheads were between 6 and 8% when I left it was 18%*

Copied and pasted from a thread in January.
[I was thinking to add the op's link onto a thread I was on from a couple of weeks ago, but I couldnt find the eact thread. Menawhile I came across this post]

My sister works in the NHS and she is constantly being drip fed (pardon the pathetic pun) information as to the desperate state the NHS . How they are having to cut back on front line staff, patients are suffering, moral is at an all time low etc.

I wonder if they ever mention the HUGE salaries, bonuses and pensions that these people are getting at the expense of all of us.

I doubt it.

Well as we all know anything in the DM will be absolutely 100% true and not in the slightest misleading. I don't for one minute think there is nothing to discuss re NHS management and salaries but doing it on the back of a DM story is a waste of time. Will make two points however - there is an issue re consultants retiring, claiming their pensions and then being re-employed - and soontobe of course the proper use of admin/ managerial staff frees up clinical staff time - here are some examples - booking appointments, recruiting staff, managing theatre time - which is incredibly expensive. As for admin/management costs going up - some of this is down to the sheer complexity of modern medicine and some of it down to the fragmentation and privatisation of the NHS - how much do you think the most recent
shambles reorganisation of the NHS has cost and is costing in management time? And perhaps someone could tell me which page of the story Manifedto that was on in 2010? And have you seen the admin/ management costs for other healthcare systems?

Tory not story - although story is a good description of manifestos in general

There is an issue alright GrannyTwice !

There is a common practice called the "one day retirement" where someone retires for one day and is then re-hired to do the same job.

I agree with your sentiments re The Daily Mail GrannyTwice but the story of Lorraine Lambert (CEO South Tyneside NHS Trust) was covered by our own local newspaper recently. So I have no reason to disbelieve it.

If I remember rightly her husband has a similar position in North Tyneside.How cosy.

admin and managers dont do clinical work.
The jobs are completely seperate.

If it wasn't for the Daily Mail, then, would these stories never get out, would they be suppressed?

I remember when I went in for an operation about 10 years ago; I arrived but had to wait along with another patient in a little area because the day room was piled high with spare chairs (?) and unusable while the sister in charge of the ward had to wait for a 'bed manager' to let her know if we could be admitted.
The sister fumed and said she had always known exactly how many beds she had and whether or not people could be admitted; now she had to wait for an admin person in a newly created job to tell her what she could or couldn't do.

DH calls it 'Empire Building'.

But clinicians are often the best ones to know how to run hospitals, soon.

I never get why a heavy staff load in big organisations is seen as necessary and a good thing.

soon - you're right, admin and managers don't do clinical work. Sadly, many clinicians now spend hours doing work that would have been done by admin historically. It's the same in nhs, social work, police, teaching - you name it, the demands of time spent inputting stuff into computers has taken on a life of its own. It's demoralising, time consuming and take practitioners/clinicians away from their key role.

Empire Building - good words.

clinicians - I looked up the word in case I was using the wrong word. But I wasnt. It mean doctor, nurses etc.

I dont see how having too many booking clerks frees up doctors?

x post.

Not sure if Iam64 is saying the same as me or not.

I will use our local council as an example.
It used to be heavily overstaffed. Due to monetary restraints, they got rid of a lot of staff. Nobody really noticed.
Then they got rid of some more. Again not much difference.
Then some more.
Now some more again. And people are noticing, not least the staff that are left.

I dont think our local hospital was anywhere near as close off the mark.
Perhaps they are now? Not sure that they are.

Perhaps I should add that middle and upper management were at least as affected, if not more than the more junior staff, at each round of cuts.

Gilly - yes I'm not doubting there is an issue - just the overall approach. If The DM was trustworthy, we could have a proper debate. For example, quoting a salary including pension contributions - that would need to be done across the board for true comparison purposes but DCs salary is always quoted without the pension contribution, the value of the free housing, transport to work costs etc etc. Re admin/management and clinical roles - the position is much more complex than some people think. There are some roles for which you need clinical qualifications in order to carry them out. Some of these positions have no management function as such ( although all will have some necessary admin eg a hospital pharmacist will have to record what drugs have been dispensed) . However, hospital pharmacy and team of pharmacists need managing and so there will be a Director of Pharmacy who will be a qualified pharmacist. There is much more to running the pharmacy department than just dispensing medicines so a manager ie the director would be responsible for a whole range of issues that would aim at improving medicine management and dispensing practices within the hospital. His/her position would count as management but only a clinician could do it. Similarly, a Trust board always has a Medical Director who is a consultant at the hospital. A proportion of his/her salary would count as management but the role would be fundemental to the proper use of the medical resources within the hospital. Then there are other roles which need no clinical qualification such as IT, HR, accountancy all which contribute to the management of the hospital and which a clinician clearly would not be carrying out. The DM simplifies the debate when it knows full well such simplification is deliberately misleading

Some of these supposedly highly paid managerial and admin staff who overloaded the system were actually secretarial staff working to clinicians, who now do their own admin, as iam says. Our local hospitals are impressively efficient but if the booking clerk for a group of doctors is on holiday, you can't make or change your appointment.

It sounds like, at some hospitals, that low level admin has been cut enough, or too much.

I don't think that booking clerks are the problem; it is the people in the upper echelons of the NHS whose posts, self-importance and subsquently their salaries seem to have taken on a life of their own.

They would be the people who would decide whether or not there should be 'cuts' - well, they are not going to cut their own posts are they!

I googled my local hospital.
No, been no job cuts for years.
Job cuts, actually came up as job vacancies!

What is the debate about - the structure of the management of a hospital? The salaries paid? A hospital has to have a CEO - it has to have a Board. On the Board the various departments necessary to the running of the hospital have to be members - Nursing, Finance, Estates, IT, Pharmacy, doctors.

Soon, the usual way for all organisations to save staffing costs ( private and public) is just not to fill vacancies . These figures would not be published and it's the remaining staff who are then affected