NH S England abandonment - good thing?

[mids2019]

This is a big overhaul in NH S management and I think the majority of feeling is that it's erasure was a good thing judging from the press.

However we have had an email from our NH S trust chief exec (as an employee) that seems to suggest the change is a massive shock to the trust management and they were desperately trying to navigate changes. Cryptic statement about looking after each other and to access health and wellbeing services of necessary.

It seems like a lot of senior managers across the NHS are a bit frustrated at such an abrupt change foisted on them with little consultation or notice?

there are going to be a huge amount of job losses, so I think they are more than ‘frustrated’.

I think it’s more concern about cutting thousands of jobs while maintaining service levels and the impact on their staff vs the timing

I have no doubt that cuts need to be made but the way they’ve done it is appalling. Another example of government walking in and haphazardly imposing changes on the nhs without actually consulting staff and understanding how it works. It seems dangerous and irresponsible to me.

Yes, we had a similar message from our Chief Exec too and I was a little confused. I had assumed the job cuts would be with the ICBs/more administrative roles within them, and whilst I do appreciate this is awful for colleagues who work in these services, I wasn’t sure how that would affect me in a front line NHS team?

I remember watching a YouTube video of the explanation of the different funding layers of the NHS and it is a really confusing tangle. So I am not sure I have really understood what the full impact of the abolishment of NHS England will have day to day on the NHS.

Government will be paying out hundreds of millions in redundancy given the scale of the cuts (probably to later discover that they don’t have enough staff and hiring more). The time and money wasted on hiring and firing that goes on in the public sector is insane.

There's been a lot in the press about the government wanting increased performance management of civil service and NHS managers, including firing poor performing managers, so I would imagine chief execs and managers will indeed be feeling extremely anxious about what has happened at NHS England.

I'm in an NHS corporate role and we had a similar email from our Chief Exec - aware that change with no warning is v unsettling, working to understand what it means for our Trust, more info as soon as they can. There's no doubt that there is a huge amount of waste in the NHS and changes need to happen, but there is also a lot of political grandstanding and macho posturing going on. The ICBs have recently made huge cuts and now they're being asked for another 50% on top?!

I wonder if they will end up having to row back on the scale of these plans

I have always felt that the NHS needed to reform management...money for extra nurses and doctors Will never work if management is not reformed first

Cuts across NHSE are being combined with 50% operating costs (aka staff) across ICBs. Plus DHSC reductions by 50%. Estimates for the whole shebang are around 30000 jobs over the next 2 years. I suspect it will be less, but at this sort of scale it will still be eye watering.

That scale, at that speed will be hugely disruptive, even if abolishing NHSE is fundamentally the right thing to do. Taking back control into DHSC probably sounds good on paper, but will be less easy in practice given the 15 years of operating with NHSE at arms length and it's amalgamated parts from across NHS Digital etc. ICBs will have to merge too, and we will go back to regional structures.

It is back to the pre-Lansley reforms so ultimately will be fine. The system is used to it. But there will be a lot less jobs, and I really feel for the people impacted.

Really interesting posts.
I think shield execs possibly have working relationships with staff at NHSE and maybe as front line staff i don't see the impact on the managerial layers. The email we received actually felt quite heart felt and with an implicit frustration that couldn't be expressed because of obvious political reasons.

I think it is the sudden announcement that has caught a lot of senior managers by surprise and I wonder how much energy in trusts will now will be focused on finding their feet in a new managerial system?

I believe they are going for major reforms in NHS band structure and further expanding of bandings