NHS privatisation: Are hospitals cutting staff because managers are taking all the cash?
To save £1m, a trust would have to reduce its total number of nurses by 25, according to the influential King’s Fund thinktank – or as few as FIVE of the 1,400 NHS Trust directors surveyed by pay analysts E-reward.co.uk [Image: Universal Images Group/Getty Images].
First, we’re told:
Hospitals are being told to shed staff to rescue the NHS from an acute funding crisis, leaving nurses and other frontline medical workers at risk of the sack.
NHS regulators have taken the controversial decision despite intense concern among hospital bosses and health unions that reducing staff will hit quality of care, patient safety and staff morale, while increasing waiting times.
Source: Hospitals told to cut staff amid spiralling NHS cash crisis | Society | The Guardian
The revelation prompted this tweet from David Schneider: “‘To avoid another Mid Staffs we must increase staffing levels which is why we’re now cutting staffing levels'” – which is pretty much the only conclusion to draw…
… until you read the following:
Almost eight out of 10 of the most senior NHS managers earn over £100,000, with almost a quarter on more than £142,500, figures show.
Overall, 23.6% of hospital trust non-medical executive directors in the UK earned more than £142,500 in 2015, compared to 21.8% in the previous year.
There were some top earners – with 3.5% earning more than £200,000 a year.
Some 5.6% also earned between £175,000 and £200,000, while 14.5% earned between £142,600 and £175,000.
The pay study found that, overall, there has been a slight rise in the number of non-medical directors at NHS trusts earning over £100,000.
Now you know where your money is going – and why the number of medical staff is being trimmed down.
But you know what really cuts like a scalpel?
It’s the suspicion that the NHS doesn’t need any of these bigwig ‘directors’ at all.
Why not sack them and hire a few accountants instead?
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Why not get rid of the bigwigs in one NHS TRUST and let it be run by medical staff who know what their hospitals need helped by an accountant? Then if this works it could be rolled out in other NHS TRUSTS.
I’m sorry to be pedantic but none of the top flight managers in the NHS earned anything like the figures you quote. They may have been paid those sums but they certainly never earned them.
The nurses, doctors, porters, cleaners etc all earned considerably more than they were paid
Under blair the privitising of the nhs started now under this lot its nearly there but now we fighting back we want our nhs but this lot have throttled the monies going to nhs diverting it to atos crapita maximus and the like but still telling it has a total under nhs guise yep they nearly there
Stunning absolutely stunning, it does not stack up at all, has anyone got the slightest idea about running a business, clearly not. Acumen is not part of their remit.
For god sake, Ive been saying this for YEARS! I worked for an NHS Management team where we had several of these overpaid leeches with all their administrative teams, who spend their days at pointless meetings, they come in at around 10 – 11am and leave at around 4pm. They are a terrible drain on the NHS and there is literally no point to their jobs. At that time we were cutting back on clinical staff to the detriment of the public just so these managers could continue to waste public money. The offices were completely wasteful also with no effort going into conservation of resources. Why is this news now?
been saying it for years,that all these managers and non medical staff are the real blood suckers of the NHS.same in local govt where the majority of our council tax goes.
these fat cat salaries in both cases want scrutinising,and any cuts should start with these
people.
My local hospital at time of writing is understaffed by at least 100 nurses alone, thats not counting all the various other roles here struggling to fill vacencies.. bearing in mind its not that big a hospital to begin with
Now they are talking about hospital mergers between ours and a hospital in the next town.. pretty frightening, anyone can get sick or have an accident.. or even just need a routine op
Whats equally horrifying is average joe has no idea what is really going on with our hospitals, I get looked at like a nut job when I dare breach the subject of NHS privatisation and how little of it is actually left….our mainstream media are worse than criminals for blacking out the truth
Compared to real commercial managers and directors the majority of public service higher reports are a waste of space with little or no common sense and could not run diddly squat. They would be quickly sacked in the commercial world and love making unnecessary lucrative niches/positions for themselves. Most are so weak skilled they have to run their decisions by committees of equally uncommercial colleagues to make sure they have others to blame. Their pay structures just enrich themselves because the decision makers really have not got a clue what or who they are recruiting. The classic was them hiring a top Trust guy who was an ex super market robber who blagged himself a nice little earner via thicko HR and decision makers. Thankfully a reporting line with some brain cells quickly flushed him out….how many others are there. Far to many useless chiefs more industrious indians needed. Cut back the management structures, make them earn their money for real responsibility, save some real cash.
my son-in-law was an accountant in the commercial world and was hired by an NHS trust and asked to bring in effective business practice – he was surprised that some of the basic solutions he outlined in his interview/presentation seemed new to the panel. After a year he was on the verge of resigning because of the resistance he is facing to obvious money saving measures that would help to increase, not reduce,the flow of funds to the front-line. It seems the first rule of this army of senior managers is – protect your position at all costs.
Good call. I often wonder if the manning of these expensive resource wasters are in fact designed to be Trojan Horses part of the self destruct plan.