Managment Consultants taking public money

It's been governments policy for years, nothing new about it. Everything to do with their ideology and the market, nothing to do with getting the best value for the tax payer.

Did you deliberately omit the apostrophe, whitewave? Which government(s) could you possibly mean...??

yes, must be the pesky Tories again.If only Corbyn and pals were in control, everything in the country would be hunky dory ( not!)

Consultancy has been big business for years and years and years, in all kindsof things not just the NHS.

roses you are absolutely right. I knew someone in the 1980s who earned was paid a fortune as a management consultant

whitewave said governments and I don't think she was pointing at any government in particular. They're all guilty of appointing consultants at absolutely ridiculous daily rates.

I didn't see the programme, but did it mention the contract with Virginia Mason Institute in America for consultancy, which is costing £12.5 million?

www.hsj.co.uk/comment/four-reasons-why-the-tdas-alliance-with-virginia-mason-is-a-bad-idea/5089307.article

Tonight was a repeat of the program shown earlier in the week trisher. I can't remember which thread it was but we discussed it quite a bit. It disgusts me that all the public sector are at it. From education through to the NHS. These consultants are not taking the public money they are being given it ! There is a huge difference. In my own health authority we have people at the top who have "retired" (excuse the joke) on massive "golden handshake" pay offs together with final salary pensions only to be rehired on a consultancy basis. The whole thing stinks!

It's all about privatisation, gillybob. You disagreed with me that the authorities themselves employ too many managers. They don't. If anything, they employ too few and then, as you say, re-employ them. The ideology behind it is that these people are no longer on the public payroll, so are expendable. They no longer have to be made redundant or be a pension liability. It's supposed to be cheaper than having permanent staff.

If you look at the senior staff employed by Academy chains, the majority have no kind of background in education. They're accountants, who think everything comes down to money. Even the new head of Ofsted has no experience as a teacher.

The latest NHS idea in North Durham

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/health/anger-over-gps-having-ask-12056494

All to save money. What?

I love the last sentence in that article "There should be no delays in waiting times". No, there won't be, because some of the patients will die. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

There is already a financial incentive for GPs not to refer. I wonder what the CCG considers to be a 'wasted appointment'. If a GP refers, it's because there's some kind of suspicion that something serious could be wrong and surely it's a positive outcome if it turns out nothing is wrong.

Exactly. That's why the GPs are complaining.
If I ring my GP, I get a nurse practitioner ringing back later that day to let me know if it's serious for a GP to speak to me, usually over the phone a few days later. If it's serious enough I might get to actually see a GP the same week.
Can't remember the last time I saw a GP there at all. It must be well over a year ago, and they are supposed to be keeping an eye on me because of the aortic dissection I had.
The last GP told me I was lucky to be alive, so at least he knew that.

I have spent over an hour today trying to find out anything I can about the Healthcare company in that article, called About Healthcare.
If anyone can find out anything about it, I'd be delighted to be told. Can't find anything on the CCG website, or on my surgery website.
Anybody would think they didn't want us to know about About Healthcare.

KONPDurham are having a march this week between all the hospitals in County Durham to show how serious it is. There's talk of closing one of the hospitals because of the need to save money. So how does paying an extra layer of non-medical staff save money?

www.konpdurham.org.uk/?page_id=18

I couldn't find anything either.

It seems to be a North Durham thing.

The official name for it is 'Rapid Specialist Opinion'. www.northdurhamccg.nhs.uk/wp.../RSO-Patient-Leaflet-6-Oct-16.pdf

Yes I saw the end earlier in the week gillybob and looked for a thread on it, but found nothing. Caught up with all the programme today. I know all governments have been doing this, but the huge increase in amounts when every other area is being cut seems completely unacceptable
dj that CCG decision is nuts. It doesn't even make economic sense. If each unnecessary appointment (do they mean admission?) costs £150 and this company is charging £10 for each letter, there would need to be a 1 in 15 rate of unnecessary appointments to justify the cost. I very much doubt if GPs are sending so many people to hospital unnecesarily. It's not only medically risky it's not even likely to save money. Where do the idiots on CCGs come from?

According to the CCG itself, it's not quite so barmy as you might think (although risky if not done properly).

The idea is that consultants and specialist GPs would do triage. They would recommend treatment without necessarily having a hospital appointment, so they might recommend tests, medication or referral to a specialist unit.

I know I once waited ages to see a consultant after having an MRI scan, only to be told that I had what he suspected, but he couldn't do anything and referred me for physio. Something like that could have been done without seeing him at all.

@trisher

Did the programme compare the cost of the management consultants with the savings which have been made from making so many managers redundant over the last few years? It would be interesting to know how the costs compare.

My problem with management consultants is that they report and recommend something and then walk away. They're not accountable and don't always understand the organisation they're dealing with. They're also very money focused and don't always foresee unintended consequences.

They usually have experience across a wide sector of business or industry. Sometimes an outside view can be very useful. I did an MBA while still employed by NHS (in my own time and while working full time) found the input from business to the course very useful. Applying the management consultancy tools to my everyday work did cast a completely different light on how things worked and how they could work better. Obviously I wasn't a management consultant but I had my eyes opened to the risk of NHS doing the same old same old because that's all they could think of doing.

I was triaged when I broke my wrist. My son phoned the GP, who said no point in taking me there as they would only send me to a hospital. Then the first hospital said no point in taking me there as they had no xray facilities after 5 p.m. So I went to the third place.
My surgery is one of those involved, and most of the complaints they get are that nobody ever gets to see a GP.
How on earth this system will improve things I have no idea.

However, my main complaint is that it was done without involving or informing the public. That is not supposed to happen these days.

daphne don't remember a comparison really. They did say how many people had been made redundant before consultants were brought in. They also had a chap who talked about the "Valley of Death". Apparently it is to do with Consultants coming in and giving an overview, highlighting a problem, then looking at that problem and finding it is much bigger than anyone thought and they need to be paid more to investigate. It's basically a work creation scheme and management consultants are doing very nicely out of it.
If consultants and specialist GPs are doing triage who is seeing their patients?

Apparently your GP can request that you be seen in the hospital, your notes can then be sent to a specialist GP, then this specialist GP can give you an appointment with another specialist GP. If you haven't heard within a fortnight, you ring your own GP again. I am confused already.