Who will help GPs if managers are laid off?
A third of senior health service managers think they will no longer work for the NHS in two years.
So what? The government has declared it wants to cut administration costs by a third. It looks like that reduction has been accepted by managers. But the government should be careful of getting what it wishes for.
Why? Consider the challenges facing the revolution in commissioning. The health secretary has said GP consortia will be free to draw support from PCTs. But shedding staff as quickly as possible runs the risk of leaving the cupboard empty when hungry GPs come looking for help.
GP consortia will need to build management infrastructure. Finding a way to retain the best managerial talent in PCTs during the transition phase and then transferring it appropriately into the new commissioning vehicles would maximise efficiency. It would also ensure some kind of corporate commissioning memory, preventing the new organisations from making a standing start.
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Readers' comments (3)
Anonymous | 17-Jun-2010 10:43 pm
Agreed.
But most PCT's have centrally defined targets which are prescriptive on what the PCT's need to do.
This is not going to benfit anyone.
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Anonymous | 18-Jun-2010 10:05 am
The Government's preferred solution seems to be a revised GP Fundholding concept, with all the extra admin costs that necessitated. It didn't work before and won't this time. Whether GPs like it or not primary care needs secondary care and acute hospitals need stability. For example in order to ensure sufficient capacity to provide trauma services in A&E you need a fully functioning orthopaedic dept. What you don't need is GPs commissioning at whim and destablishing the financial viability of acute service provision.
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Anonymous | 19-Jun-2010 5:23 pm
When someone recognises the critical role of community services and how they have been stripped bare to fund local GP initiatives or expensive PFI builds and additional consultants, we may be able to deliver services that are affordable.
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