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    Management wage bill for NHS -- percentage of total budget Archived Message

    Posted by scrabb on August 23, 2023, 4:23 pm

    A personal story: my wife, now retired, was an ophthalmic theatre sister and assisted in hundreds if not thousands of cataract operations. She was a young nurse at the time Thatcher instigated wholesale structural changes to the NHS including non-medical management in overall control.Up to that point the senior managers were themselves medically trained, and the wards were run by matrons with an iron rod. Even senior consultants were chary of interfering or criticising the matrons' edict.

    In those days (before she passed her test) I used to drive her to the hospital, and the car park was filled with small family cars and one or two old bangers. Gradually I noticed the car park was taken over by predominantly brand-new BMWs and the occasional Mercedes. When I asked by wife about this she said they belonged to the new management team which was now in charge of all departments. This particular hospital and the other major one in town came under the same structure (whereas before they had been run separately) which was possibly called a Trust, or this name might have come later. A local businesswoman, who might have been an ex-Tory councillor, was put in overall charge, at a very generous salary, and she brought in a whole raft of senior and junior managers to run things, none of whom had medical qualifications. As well as handsome salaries, offices and secretaries, support staff and other perks, most of them had company cars.

    These reflections are spurred, odd as it might seem, by the Letby saga. The layers of management at her hospital which conspired to cover up her crimes were of course motivated by self-preservation. They didn't want their high status, vast salaries and gold-plated pensions to be harmed by an investigation. So they had to be dragged kicking and screaming into an investigation by the senior medical staff. (And they still haven't had to answer for or to sacrifice anything for this blatant dereliction of duty.)

    To my way of thinking, this episode can be traced right back to Thatcher and her dogma of introducing her politicised place-men and women at inflated salaries to run the NHS and teach the medical staff who was best qualified to organise it efficiently. And this is where it's landed us.

    I should also like to know what percentage of the NHS wage bill goes to management as opposed to medical staff. At a time when the service is under immense pressure and short of money, how much of it is going to this top-layer stratum of useless blood-sucking parasites who are largely responsible for the woes and inneficiencies the NHS is struggling with.

    Does anyone have the figures, or know where to find them?









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