NHS

I wouldn’t worry about her comment, right or wrong, it’s just her opinion, not worth falling out over.
I agree the NHS needs more funding though & there’s no doubt there will be areas where money is wasted but it sounds like they are tightening things up. I’m sure some NHS Trusts will be better at controlling & managing staff budgets than others. The NHS also spends a high amount of money on Scientific research which is essential if we want to move forward with new treatments, vaccines etc.
Money is wasted when people repeatedly order expensive items on prescriptions, just ticking the boxes when they don’t really need it and stock piling pills, creams etc. Expensive unused and unopened drugs have to be thrown away and I’ve seen people take carrier bags full into the pharmacy. They have taken some things off prescription now and rightly so. If we had to pay for things like blood tests we would have a shock too but people just take all these things for granted and don’t think about the real costs involved.

You are entitled to your point of view and your sister to hers.

Surely there is no point in being so offended that she didn't just agree with you that you won't talk to her?

Quite a number on this thread seem to agree with your sister, so perhaps you will reconsider both what she said and what you feel about it.

As usual no one has mentioned the millions we spend on medical aid we give to health tourists. Or the millions of extra people coming to this country who we are duty bound to give medical care. Over 1000 economic immigrants arrived in one day. I can give one example of when I worked in Occupational Therapy, one man had a stroke in his own country but his family got him here somehow so he could be treated here. Our NHS cannot cope with all these extra people, it is logical that our overworked medical staff are run ragged trying to cope and they are at breaking point. I would imagine that because these people cannot register with a GP straight away, they go to A and E for treatment. Our government cannot say this as usual they would be called racists

bobbydog24

No one is arguing managers are not important to the running of the NHS, it’s the amount of them that is unnecessary and the ridiculously high salaries they are on. I can recollect chef James Martin being sent a photo of a meal by a patient that looked inedible. He made it his business to go into the hospital and was amazed at the amount they were paying for the supplies. He sourced local suppliers for half the amount the hospital were paying and got the price per meal right down. He later returned to find they hadn’t changed anything. Says it all.

14% of the budget goes on management and admin, lower than the average for businesses.

I don't think the canteen staff qualify for the management slot.

I recently had an accident and had to have various hospital stays/treatments and was rather annoyed at the many obvious ways that money could be saved but nobody seemed bothered.

I totally agree with your sister. When my daughter was training as a student nurse I was with her when she applied for a car park pass. The number of departments we had to go to was ridiculous!!!!!

SecondhandRose

I’ve just finished chemo. One of my nurses was Vietnamese. When I tried to give back unused sealed medication she said it would all be binned and how the people from her country would be desperate for it and how sad it was.

I’m afraid I agree with your sister. There should be a central buyer for the NHS. Too many trusts, too many high paid managers.

Just imagine the uproar if some medication or equipment was re-allocated and was found to have been tampered with.

magshard20

What really annoys me about the NHS is the amount of unnecessary paperwork sent out to patients......I recently had to have a diabetic eye screening, I was sent the original letter giving me date and time.......that's fine BUT a week before the appointment I was sent a reminder letter (identical to the original!) and then the day before the appointment I was sent a text
message. A bit like overkill in my opinion. I retired from the NHS almost 11 years ago and can definitely say that the service has gone downhill in those years.

You do realise how much is wasted by people failing to turn up for appointments. I bet if you'd forgotten or the first letter was lost you'd be complaining that they hadn't done enough to get you there.

Chewbacca

Casdon All of the ones I listed were an actual "head count"; they either did their roles full time in that designated position or, as you say, sat on one or more boards within the Trust so that they're employed full time. I specifically checked for that. They have 55 vacancies across the Trust, 8 of which are non clinical and offering salaries up to £76,000 per annum. The highest salary being offered for clinical staff is £49,000, apart from one locum vacancy at £118,000 pro rata.

Clinical roles go much higher than £49k. One of my kids is a nurse, still in their 20s and they are earning more than £49k.

Doesn't the salary depend on what pay grade they're on? I don't recall seeing whether pay grades were mentioned on the website with staff vacancies at out Trust.

From experience working in the clinical side of the NHS, your sister is spot on.
Hospital consultants are paid less than senior management, who from personal experience have thickly carpeted big offices with expansive desks and separate “conference areas”, and two or 3 layers of Pa’s with their own outer offices, whereas consultants frequently have to share offices and secretaries , sometimes with secretaries in the same offices, one of the reasons your GPS often don’t get your clinic letters in as timely fashion as they ought. And experienced clinical advice is often ignored; I remember our consultants giving a reasoned opinion to managers as to why we would be desperately short of beds down the line, but managers knew better and shut a couple of wards, one of the annual “cut 15% from your budget” rounds” which only seemed to be applied to the sharp end of the service, and look at the queues of ambulances waiting outside A&E now for patients to be found beds. Proper dietitians designing diets suitable for different illnesses were another cut. Also the Time and Motion officer! And the numbers of trainee doctors entering the 5 year postgrad training programme. There are many other nonsensical examples I could quote.
Black humour is rife in NHS clinical staff (unless it has been outlawed since I retired), and we used to joke if we saw an area of the hospital renovated that it was ripe for closure.

Bankhurst I would of agreed with her as she’s absolutely correct!!

Chewbacca I’ve the same servitude with the NHS and it’s an eye opener isn’t it?

are pen pushers the staff in payroll , staff who pay suppliers and check for fraud, or the staff in clinical audit, governance, communications or or the staff in booked admissions or medical records ?
Comments such as this are often made from a genuine place but are so out of touch as the NHS is a huge organisation with a very complicated structure. Funding baffled the best of us in the know!
It is subject to endless scrutiny and regulation, and used as a football by political parties. I have worked in public and private sector and in clinical and non clinical roles within the NHS. Money is one thing but how and where its spent is another. I could list 100s of decision's that could easily have been made differently. Decent engaged and skilled leadership is what's missing.
To finish up - you are both right..

A case of where facts and not opinions are needed: One would need to compare the amounts spent on administrative staff compared with professionals. These figures would need to be compared with comparative organisations.

By what I’ve heard from family members in NHS your sister is correct and many people in the know have said the same.

I totally agree with her. While waiting to see a consultant, we noticed quite a few people just walking up and down carrying a folder and never seem to be going anywhere.
I was also disgusted about the amount of disposable equipment discarded in the wards and this was before Covid arrived.

I worked for the NHS for 12 years and suffered five re-organisations during that time, and each time, eye wateringly expensive consultants were brought in. These reorganisations caused so much disruption that we had barely settled down before the next one came along. I also saw at least three IT systems cancelled after millions had been spent on them. Worriedwell, I don't know where you live but nurses certainly don't earn anything like £49k where I live!

Bankhurst......
Why haven't you responded to all these gransetters? Are you a Devils Advocate; 'a person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke debate or test the strength of the opposing arguments'.

Perhaps she is just someone who has a life outside of gransnet.
It's an interesting discussion either way.

Maybe she does have a point, you won't see much evidence of lavish spending in the frontline staff, but what I think really excessive spending is huge amounts on private health providers like Serco etc. who pay consultants figures like £10k a day. the service would be better and cheaper if it were all in-house, as Labour plant to do

Some of the information on this thread is misleading. An average NHS consultant earns £95-£100,000 pa. In a Trust you would have the non clinical directors on similar salaries, but not other managers. I fail to see how a huge and complex organisation could attract people at director level unless they paid that salary level.

Almost every organizations have waste. Government or otherwise. It is unavoidable. More important though is the relationship with your sister. You are always going to have different perspectives on things. Easier to move on to topics that you agree on. Not that you can't tackle things that you don't, but if this upsets you so much, you really should.

23,500 migrants have crossed the channel so far this year. This is only the ones who have come by boat. Without all the thousands who are arriving by other means.

I have a close relative who was a hospital doctor for the NHS. He would agree with your sister.