More depressing reading December 2, 2006
Posted by MadRad in NHS & Politics.trackback
I’ve spent a little while perusing the latest “Public Expenditure on Health and Personal Social Services 2006 Memorandum received from the Department of Health containing Replies to a Written Questionnaire from the Committee“.
Some of it makes very interesting reading.
Some little nuggests contained within its 294 pages include the fact that NHS infrastructure support has increased staff from 170,623 to 220,387 between 1997 & 2005. However of this total there has been an increase in managers and senior managers from 22,173 to 39,391 – a 77.65% increase. Compares this to the mid 20’s percentage increase for nursing staff and radiographers (All figures are for headcount not FTEs)
There are now more managers than GPs (39,391 vs 35,302,2005 figures)
The Government admitted to underestimating the cost of Agenda for Change. In the first 12 months this amounted to £220 million made up of £120 million in case terms with another £100 million for the indirect costs of replacing additional hours and annual leave arising from AfC.
From 05-06 to 08-09 the yearly costs of implementing Agenda for Change are £950M, £1,390M, £1,780M & £2,200 M respectively.
It confirms they blew another £90 million undersetimating the cost of the new GP contracts.
PFI expenditure, both the cost of running existing PFIs and the cost of abandonning plans is even too depressing to comtemplate.
They spent £133 million on Patsy’s friends the management consultants in 05-06 alone. To put this into context the projected net deficite which has us all shitting our pants is only £94 million
Turn-around teams in underperforming Trusts have, so far, cost £21.1 million. However we don’t need to worry about that (yet)
Before we can say whether this has been money well spent, we need to know what has been released in terms of savings. If it has delivered more than £22.1m it will have been money well spent; if it has only delivered £5m it may have been a waste.
(Dr Gill Morgan, NHS Confederation chief executive).
Lets face it. They’ve fucked up. Big time.
We know it. They know it.
Hello, MadRad, belated thanks for the link to this fascinating document. I just had a look at the headcount figures. I can’t actually make sense of the “NHS infrastructure support” number because it is smaller than the “Admin and clerical” number……. anyway, one reason for the increase in the number of people on the management payscale (which is what this is counting) is that job definitions get, um, creatively worded, in order to be able to recruit someone halfway good in competition with the private sector, or at least other bits of the public sector (eg local authorities). There are plenty of people on the NHS management payscale would would not be considered managers outside the NHS.