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The web is awash with commentary on Daniel Hannan’s incendiary comments on the NHS, thanks to the Twitter army. Even Lord Darzi was summoned from his holiday last night to pay tribute to our national treasure on the news.
And the backlash has started already, with right wing blogger Iain Dale denouncing as “puerile politics” the determination of politicians and celebs to express their disgust through every social media pore.
Dale argues that “to ignore the points he makes and pretend all is well is to brush it all under the carpet…exactly what the Labour Party wishes the media would do.”
So let’s look at a few facts.
Hannan’s biggest beef is with you. The legions of “bureaucrats” he says, using his disarmingly ability to talk for hours without blinking, are plaguing the NHS with expensive box-ticking.
There are 1.4m employees he says, and, apparently “most of those 1.4m are administrators! Managers outnumber the doctors and nurses!”
Shocking! But entirely incorrect.
There were 1.1m full-time equivalent staff employed in the NHS in 2008, according to the Information Centre for health and social care. This comprised:
- 125,629 doctors
- 329,372 nurses
- 122,059 qualified scientific, therapeutic & technical staff
- 284,367 support to clinical staff
And…(boo, hiss)
- 187,177 NHS infrastructure support. Of these, 37,937 were managers.
In the interests of balance, we’ll consider how these staff groups have grown in the past decade.
Admittedly, managers have seen one of the biggest rises, up by 5.7 per cent, while numbers of nurses have only gone up by 2.5 per cent and doctors by 3.8 per cent (although there are 11.5 per cent more registrars, while the category of “other GPs” has jumped by 25.9 per cent to 5,285)
But there are still 417,064 MORE doctors and nurses than managers.
It’s only one of his many points, and I haven’t even touched on the more notorious statements made by him and his fans on “death panels” and waiting times (for some reason Fox News decided to use waiting time figures from 2004 during his recent appearance).
And it’s not as if the NHS is perfect. Perhaps, as one Tweeter put it, it’s like your home town. You can criticise it, but no-one else is allowed to. But anyone who dares to risk the ire of the British public - and NHS managers - should at least get their facts straight.
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Readers' comments (5)
Paul Tovey | 15-Aug-2009 7:07 pm
Mental Health :
Not being admin class myself I get to see and feel what happens in the dog areas of life where the bones live and sleep - that is to say if they are not still half alive and being chewed by the NHS in mental health . Managers under pressure from CEO's and Govt pick over what bone-life to discard and allow to vanish all too often . The evidence is in the Churchyard of long experience - the one inside the heart too that no managerial image-play can disturb ..
However in the great words of Jack of The Wards - someone now dead but who was half alive for many years and drip fed liquified slurry boned services - so lean , scrooge would have been proud :
Of wings I am neither labour nor right
But from the angels mental health
Scrutiny wing
Of 50 years of needle sharp insight
And my bones now make a cross
And heavens kite
And my graffiti survived
Because I had the power to write
And so did the Observer recently : 12th July 2009 :
New figures released by the Ministerial Council on Deaths in Custody show that in the past 10 years 3,540 of those detained in NHS facilities, including high-security psychiatric hospitals, have died.
The figures have been condemned as "horrific" by the Howard League for Penal Reform, which will launch a campaign tomorrow called Lost Daughters, calling for fewer women and girls to be held in custody. As part of its campaign, the charity will place a memorial advert in the Observer every time there is a death.
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Patrick Newman | 18-Aug-2009 3:05 pm
Yes, but how much time do medical staff spend on patients and professional development and how much time do they spend supplying the voracious appetite of "managers" supplying information, planning foundation bids, populating risk analysis, drawing up departmental service plans, attending numerous meetings bloody meetings, responding to various audits and investigations, talking to SPCT's and DoH and so on ad infinitum.
Modern public sector senior management (it is not confined to the NHS) add very little value to the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation they are responsible for. And for NED's ........!
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Martin Rathfelder | 18-Aug-2009 7:45 pm
The idea that the NHS would run better with fewer managers is pretty stupid, but the idea of management needs a bit of unpicking. Who is counted in the total? The Medical Director? Senior nurses? Ward clerks?
The point of management is to make the best of limited resources. If resources are going to be more limited we may need more managing.
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Paul Shannon | 20-Aug-2009 8:14 am
The NHS is mediocre. If you're happy with that, then fine. If not, then as Oscar Wilde said, 'Discontent is the beginning of greatness for a Nation'.
Professional managers should not be content with OK; else what's thier 'raison d'être'?
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Anonymous | 20-Aug-2009 6:09 pm
You are quite right that the NHS is mediocre. The NHS must learn from the very successful private sectors such as the BANKS!! Its a crying shame that everyone jumps on the bandwagon to criticise the NHS and the managers that have kept this national institution going in very difficult circumstances but turn a blind eye at the way public funds are spent on MEPs and MPs etc. At least the NHS is in the business of saving lives and it does that very well without the managers being paid second home allowances or any of the benefits that MEP's enjoy.
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