Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

More propaganda from the free-market extremist Telegraph, who claim 'Head of #NHS review General Gordon Messenger says more money won't solve #NHS crisis!' Messenger's review recommendations were dismissed as "either peripheral or so vague as to be virtually worthless".

In June 2022, General Messenger completed a review of leadership in the English #NHS considering the "pay & incentives" of its most senior figures, as well as the "effective systems for intervention & recovery in both providers & integrated care systems".

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1597227560777437186?s=20&t=eI2CubXmHAFJavBVYLxIdQ

The Review called for improved leadership & made it perfectly clear the #NHS actually has “far too few managers” with low spending on administration & planning compared to other healthcare systems.

We knew this in 2011, when the King’s Fund think tank wrote: “There is no persuasive evidence that the #NHS is over-managed, and a good deal of evidence that it may be under-managed.”

We knew this when the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that the #NHS spends about half the OECD average on admin and planning – about 1.5 per cent of its budget, compared to 4.1 per cent in France and 7.9 per cent in the US.

It should be obvious that managers are useful.

Policy analyst Steve Black: “There is no point having a doctor in the operating theatre if the anaesthetist hasn’t turned up, the theatre hasn’t been cleaned, the hospital has run out of blood and there is no bed available to receive the patient when the operation is over.”

But for a decade and more, there has been a consistent drive in the NHS to reduce the number of people doing that work. Over the last decade, the number of managerial staff was slashed – dropping around 30% between 2010 & 2013, mainly under Lansley’s disastrous 2012 reforms.

So we’ve had a decade-long experiment in “more frontline staff” & “fewer fat-cat managers” and the result has been a steady decline in #NHS performance by most metrics. There’s also been underinvestment in capital – basic infrastructure, things like functioning computers or beds.

This isn’t to say the #NHS has enough doctors & nurses; it is to say that doctors & nurses aren’t the bottleneck. We’re not getting everything we can out of the clinicians we have, because they’re spending three hours a day on admin and managerial work, rather than with patients.

The billionaire-owned press has attacked the #NHS since its inception, because it signifies everything they hate: the #socialist principle of a compassionate Govt looking after those in need, regardless of wealth, class, religion, age, sex, ethnicity or educational attainment.

The Tories hate the 'socialist #NHS' & have spent years attacking it & cutting the number of #NHS managers, to the point where it's blindingly obvious that the NHS now has “far too few managers” with low spending on administration & planning compared to other healthcare systems.

Politically motivated cuts to management, combined with successive Govts making #NHS purchasing increasingly complex & competitive, means doctors & nurses are being forced to spend hours doing managerial and admin work.

inews.co.uk/opinion/time-a…

Finally, the #NHS review by Messenger also highlighted that 'all NHS leaders have a responsibility to take a zero tolerance approach to discrimination & drive greater equality, diversity & inclusion,' which immediately led to lurid headlines in the right-wing press like this: