No administrators were culled during Welsh NHS restructuring
A storm erupted last night after it emerged that not a single administrator’s job was lost when the NHS in Wales was reorganised in October.
Although the number of Local Health Boards shrank from 22 to seven and dozens of highly-paid top management posts disappeared, no-one has been invited to apply for voluntary redundancy
or otherwise been forced to take it.
Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister Andrew RT Davies said:
We were promised NHS restructuring would deflate Labour’s bloated health service bureaucracy and refocus delivery on to frontline patient care.
People pay tax and National Insurance to receive first-class healthcare, not to bankroll administrators and bureaucrats.
David Rosser, director of CBI Wales, said:
This is a situation that a lot of people in the private sector and a lot of taxpayers will be angry about.
Nobody likes to make people redundant, but sadly there are times when efficiency savings have to be made.
It is inconceivable that a reorganisation along these lines could take place in the private sector without a reduction in head count.
This does not augur well for the savings the Assembly Government will need to make in the coming years.
The Assembly Government said:
We expect to see a reduction in management costs over time but this was never the primary purpose of the reform programme. The main savings of the reforms will result from reducing the transactional costs associated with the internal market.
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3 comments:
I think both the David Rosser and The Assembly Government are right.
While there probably is wastage in the NHS, the place to look is the DHSS.
I phoned the "helpline" with a view to claim Contributions Based Jobseekers Allowance, only to find out that the joker filled in my claim for Income Support (50 mins). I only found this out when I went to the Jobcentre for my interview......
You can't, of course, sack NHS workers especially nursing or clinical staff. No politician likes to sack nurse because, well, it just doesn't look good.
From my experience, getting rid of managerial staff who are seen as mere 'pen pushers' might sound politically good but it does have negative ramifications for the organisation.
There is a lack of accountability within the NHS with staff ignoring the basic requirements. For example, they found in one Trust that they were not doing Criminal record check for staff including ones who come in contact with children.
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