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

I've just had a look at the staff list for my surgery. It dates back to before all the doctors left, but when there were eight GPs, there were twenty three admin staff!!

I am amazed, crun. Presumably some of them were part-timers, but I have never seen more than about 6 or 8 admin staff at our surgery and there were 6 GPs.

GrannyTwice just in case you have missed the point because you can't bring yourself to look at a DM article , I think the gist of the thread is (although I haven't read the article either!!) that the bosses in the higher echelons of the NHS are wasting money on themselves; awarding themselves huge pay increases on already bloated salaries and going on jollies at the expense of the rest of the NHS which is struggling.

A bit like the Tesco fiasco in some ways - the suppliers/farmers being screwed down on price so that some can barely make a living and customers paying over the odds whilst those at the top were buying themselves private Gulfstream jets.

However, unlike Tesco and the greed at the top, this could be a matter of life and death for some people.

Perhaps gillybob has assessed it better than me and can help you.

Many, many articles have been written in the press, both local and national (not just the DM), over the last few years, of the excesses of those at the top of the NHS at the expense of nurses, patient services etc.

If the DM knows all about these salaries, how is it that politicians are apparently only just learning about them?
I have noticed today that without any great fanfare, the Audit Commission closed three weeks ago and its functions will be undertaken by a plethora of other bodies - or that's what it looks like to the uninformed (me). Perhaps someone with more knowledge of public finance might be able to tell us to whom these bodies will be accountable in future.

www.audit-commission.gov.uk/about-us/future-functions-at-a-glance/

No I haven't missed the point at all and I said in my first post that I accepted there was an issue. Bu the DM is never a reliable source of information - they give a simplistic view when to discuss the matter properly requires much more detail. Cruns point shows exactly what happens when figures are not given their proper context - gp surgeries do have nearly all part time admin staff and so you need the FTE figures and no of patients before you can make any comment at all. They also have nurses and health care assistants. I believe the article says something about a Chief Nurse on £700, 000 - oh come on!

Yes GrannyTwice, the DM article did report a Chief Nurse on £700,000 - that's the point at which I stopped reading.

I may not have the correct facts about this as it's only things I've been told in passing but I've heard that a lot of nurses, because they are paid so badly and treated pretty shabbily are now doing contract work [supply work?] for much more money. They don't get the same job satisfaction that they used to get working on the same wards and getting to know the patients but with juggling child care and paying mortgages they'd be stupid not to want to earn more and be treated better. If they worked with beter pay and conditions they would far rather not do the supply work , but it must be costing the NHS a fortune. Most staff at surgeries tend to be part time which is why there appears to be a lot of them.

That is correct, Tegan

And just a minor point, but DN is a nurse and she and her colleagues have been working quite happily doing shifts which fit in with family life and suit the hospital for years and years.
Now they have a new 'whizkid' admin manager (a newly created post) to administer the rotas and shifts and she has decided they can't carry on doing the shifts that suit everyone, she is going to mix them all up, days and nights.
Result: a lot of very upset nurses for no reason whatsoever, and a lot of expenditure on a useless and unnecessary new manager.

Can some employers not understand that a lot of women choose certain careers because they seem to be professions that cater more for women going back to work after having children [I'm not saying it isn't vocational as well]. These whiz kid managers cause so much trouble. My daughter is having problems trying to get teaching work because she only wants to work part time. Someone she knows is on maternity leave and has been told there is no part time work available for her should she want to work for that school again. Unless you teach maths or physics they have you over a barrel . There isn't supply work either because schools now employ newly qualified teachers who can cover for any lesson where the teacher is absent at short notice.

rose I think it has been shown that mixing up shifts instead of staying with a pattern that suits the individual is bad for their health. The body gets used to waking and sleeping at cetain times, and if that is changing all the time it gets confused. That whizz-kid admin manager doesn't know her job if she thinks she is making improvements.

Rose - I hope your daughter is in a union

They tried this at a local hospital with admin staff - they wanted them to do 8-4 one week and 9-5 the next and didn't appreciate the child care implications. They were nearly all in the union and the idea was ditched

I think the manager wanted them to do a mix of nights and days, whereas nights fits in with childcare for some and those doing days were quite happy too.
(It is DN, not DD, I should have asked her last time I spoke to her how it is going and if it has all gone away.)

Gets even worse (as if that's possible) Today we're told that most of the top earners are dodging tax (legally)

Which newspaper has that story?

You know which paper! And no Petra we are not told that, it is some of them. I am not condoning the use of a company to avoid tax and its use by staff on short term contracts but it is not most of the top earners. This ploy is widespread and is even more reprehensible when in use in the public sector

No I dont!
If you mean the Daily Mail, I dont go on the site as much as I used to. And todays big headline is of a dead body, so I looked no further.

[One of my daughters was called an enigma at school by her form teacher. I guess that I am one too].

An enigma variation soon?

Yes! I like the sound of that.
[I had to look that up, along with the meaning of enigma when my child was called it]

I am sorry if it annoys a few posters, but there is nothing I can do about it.

Right. Back to the op.

a colleague's wife, a physiotherapist with 30 years of NHS service has just been made redundant at 53. Now given early retirement on pension of 30/40 of salary. How can that be saving money? Even if long term staff are more expensive than newly qualified, there is still the cost of this person's pension from 53, 13 years earlier than state retirement age. There are likely thousands of similar cases, and it has been suggested that she may wish to return on a part time, self-employed/agency basis. Madness

I cant work out where things have gone so badly awry in government organisations.
It seems to be the systems.
Who puts these systems in place, which ultimately do the damage.
I sometimes wonder whether having lots of peeople working for governemt in some capacity or other, and peoples salaries and pensions, matter more than the organisation itself. Whether that is what has landed this country in its present position.

I know from personal experince, re a small charity, that a "system" ie how someone set up something, is almost impossible to get out of.
Loosely, the same board running something, is the same board overseeing it.

Younger, newer staff are cheaper because they get lower salaries, yes, but also because the contracts they work to and the pension arrangements are often much meaner. In universities, for example, staff were appointed to permanent contracts that really were permanent. Now many staff are on short-term or temporary contracts so they have very limited job security. Conditions and salaries were based on national agreements. These have all gone by the board and the salaries and benefits of the most senior staff have been hugely inflated. The salaries and wages of the most junior are much lower in real terms than they were. Same story throughout the public sector.

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-biggest-useu-free-trade-agreement-in-history-is-advancing-behind-closed-doors-10189919.html

TTIP again. The worrying thing is that they have been told not to tell us. We will only find out how much of the NHS has been privatised after the deed is done. Either that or private companies will be able to sue the government.