Don't mess with our NHS (Pt II)

Greetings readers,

And how are we today? Hopefully the miserable weather has not been depressing you too much; it really feels like Autumn has arrived prematurely. Indian Summer this certainly ain't. Anyway, from the picture above you will no doubt have worked out that the subject of my soliloquy in this post is the NHS. Ah yes, our favourite topic of discourse (and of the Americans it seems) and debate on this grey isle

This morning, the Today programme featured a debate between Niall Dickinson, head of The King's Fund, an independent health care think-tank, and Carl Emmerson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies. The two men were discussing the government's recent rejection of advice by management consultants, McKinsey & Company. Given my brief foray into management consultancy, and my interest in health care, this certainly grabbed my attention.

Anyhow, it has transpired that the government commissioned McKinsey to look into ways to cut costs and increase efficiency in the NHS. And surprise surprise, what has McKinsey's advice been? To cut the NHS workforce in England by 10% over the next 5 years. This would involve closing 137,000 clinical and admin posts in order to save £20bn by 2014. What is particularly galling about this is the fact that no doubt the government spent a small fortune paying McKinsey for its professional services with taxpayers money in order to then be given the most abundantly obvious advice! This will no doubt propagate all the stereotypes about management consultants and launch a thousand more jokes about the profession. Quite a large part of me is now relieved I didn't get a job with A T Kearney!

In addition to staff cuts, McKinsey also advised that a recruitment freeze should start within two years and medical school places might have to be reduced. Now I am no politician, but were the government (and whoever in particular commissioned McK.) so myopic so as not to realise that spending a small fortune on consultancy would not offer them anything drastically new? And furthermore, surely McKinsey should have realised that suggesting significant NHS job cuts and a recruitment freeze of our beloved NHS, the third largest employer in the world, just wouldn't wash politically, nor carry any favour with the British public?! Sometimes you have to wonder whether some of these management consultants actually have any common sense whatsoever. My experience tells me otherwise, but McKinsey are certainly doing well to change my opinion on this.

Essentially what Niall Dickinson and Carl Emmerson were saying was that there is no real necessity for job cuts, but that according to this BBC article, NHS employees "need to find new ways of working, being more productive and being more efficient". It always seems to go back to the NHS mantra of 'efficiency, efficiency, efficiency'.

Listen to the discussion from the Today programme here.

Interestingly, the BBC news article featured a graph showing the number of NHS staff over the last 12 years: there has been a steady increase year-on-year, particularly in terms of admin and support staff. Of course I am sure that McKinsey's advice was based on rigorous, robust and highly data-driven analysis. However, for all the energy expended in order to make these recommendations, the simple fact of the matter is that the NHS is a sacrosanct organisation which has helped millions of people in Britain over the last 60 years. Unfortunately this means that any suggestions to change the organisation at a macro-level are therefore invariably, also a political consideration.

Currently listening to Trentemøller's mix entitled "Harbour Boat Trips 01, Copenhagen" (again). A very good and eclectic mix indeed. Check it out here.

Thank you for reading,

F.