To say the NHS does not have too many admin staff?

[Leakingtoilet]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/30/nhs-has-many-admin-staff-not-enough-managers/

We don't have enough staff to get the job done, hence the fact we are constantly offering admin and secretarial overtime. It seems that way in most other departments that I have dealings with. Plus it's really difficult to recruit to vacant posts.

Anyone have a different experience?

Every appointment I've attended recently (Physio, blood test, GP) have had more staff than patients.

I am nhs admin and can say it varies, some have too many some don't.

There are too many managers.

I’ve been running my team recently on 2.5 staff down, as have other departments so definitely not too many admin staff in me experience.

I’m finding it really difficult to recruit as well.

Yes I agree with that. Although it depends what you class as a manger. I definitely feel there are too many high level managers who make decisions without actually knowing what is happening on the floor. It's very frustrating.

Not sure if you're being serious or not. Of course they do. They will be there all day, but each patient will only be allocated a certain block of time, be it 15 minutes or an hour. What do you want, all the patients to wait around after they've been seen?

Same here, we don't have enough admin staff send we rely on them heavily or we can't get anything done.

Absolutely. Every time something/someone isn't working as it should we just add another line of management to fill the gaps.

I work in the NHS. In our trust, there’s so many at 8A and above. Proportionally, it seems like there’s far too many that are needed to manage the bands 2-7. You need more on the ground and fewer at the top earning the mega bucks. My manager regularly tells me that they put posts out to advert 2-3 times before they find someone. Sometimes no-one at all even applies!!

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to attract good admin staff, they can be paid better elsewhere. I’ve worked in a number of NHS trusts and the ratio of clinical to non clinical staff has been roughly the same at 80:20. You have to have back office staff to keep the whole thing moving. Articles like this frustrate me. It’s easy to take random pot shots at things in isolation and focus on that without viewing all the issues and prioritising and joining up the dots as a whole.

In my team (and in the whole trust as far as I can tell) there are way too many managers and not enough admin ...

My only experience with NHS is maternity ward stays. The midwives do a ridiculous amount of admin.
Every time they do rounds for painkillers etc they spend more time documenting what they are doing than the action itself.

The number of admin staff could perhaps be reduced if the NHS invested in modern and functioning IT systems that integrated across primary and secondary care.

An example:
In outpatients a clinician sees a patient then dictates a letter, a medical secretary types the letter, someone posts the letter, the GP admin team scan the letter and upload it to their system. This process takes months

It needs large scale digitalisation. My GP shouldn't have to write a letter to a consultant to then receive a letter back, to then write another letter etc etc to get a simple appointment. It should be an online booking system with no letters! All records in the same place. I know they are trying but the whole system is so clunky.

Yes the bloody letters back and forth are ridiculous.

It's not just about how many staff there are, but about how efficient the processes are. I spent some time as a typist for hospital letters and it was dull, inefficient and long-winded. I was fast but we had another typist who spent a lot of time staring in to space and did 2-3 letters an hour.

Have you all read the article?

The nhs badly need tech investment. Not least because it hugely improves patient safety. Digital systems that are joined up between primary care, acute care, social care are key to reducing the requirement of administrative tasks, and releasing time to care for clinicians.

There are not nearly enough managers ime. I am one. I work ridiculous hours, as do all my peers and its pretty thankless. This is supported in the article. The nhs has less managers than other countries. My pay on paper is good, but it's barely minimum wage when I work it out as an hourly figure. It's unsustainable.

In my experience (corporate rather than clinical), in my trust:

Execs/senior mgrs are driven by anxiety to meet their targets/financial sustainability/PR on top of the hugely stressful operational circumstances trying to keep patients safe. This stress feeds down the chain.

Very difficult to recruit, therefore too many temporary staff, charging high daily rates, and demotivating permanent staff as well as reducing overall funding available.

Across all bandings, there are not enough admin and clerical staff who apply critical thinking to their tasks. Not enough willingness to learn and develop, again this is across all bandings. Several gems of staff who carry the load of others.

if I had the powers, I wouldn’t look to hire more admin, I’d automate.
For example in maternity: each mother is issued a bracelet that can scan QR codes and link directly to the patient record.
Every time there is a round of obs/painkillers etc just use the correct code on their bracelet, done.
Then there can be automatic reminders for repeat actions at certain intervals.
This wouldn’t even be that expensive to set up - a fraction of the failed Track and Trace.
Care will improve so much by freeing up midwives to focus on patients.

I have cancer. A lot of my life depends on being able to get through to consultant’s secretarys. Appointment needed to be cancelled due to covid and I need an override because the next regular one is two months away? Secretary. Prescription not gone through to GP? Secretary. Critical illness form not through? Secretary.

Unfortunately these things are getting harder and harder to get sorted I presume due to lack of staff. Prescription issues regularly take days to sort - which is not ideal when they need to be ordered in and I need them to not die. A missed appointment took a week to be able to contact someone to reschedule - and that was a week of constant calling. And the critical illness cover - cover which will allow me to rest, recover and not worry about work for a year - took six months, PALS and a letter to my MP to sort.

All of which makes me a terrible drain on the economy. You can’t work if you literally need a week a month to call around and organise your illness. You can’t resign work to be ill if you don’t know if your insurance will pay out. You just sit there on sick leave for months being ill and expensive.

I worked in audiology for a couple of years as a band 3 technician. In a dept of approximately 2, staffing was as follows:

2 admin
6 band 3s
3 band 5s
5 band 6s
6 band 7s
3 band 8+

I genuinely believe that therein lies the problem.

25

You'll need to explain why this was a problem?

We band 3s and 5s did the legwork. The organisation of the department was far too top heavy and would have functioned much more efficiently if there weren't so many band 7s sitting in offices conducting research. The balance was wrong.

Having just had an unbelievable struggle to match deliveries of medical supplies to actual need (I have a big stack of ùnneeded feeds in my garage despite turning away 2 deliveries) I think YANBU. Certainly I believe our local hospital would save a fortune or at least break even if it employed an admin officer to deal with ordering and supplies.

of course there arent too many admin staff!
there are too many unnecessary managers
we know this
where on earth does the Telegraph get its opinions?
how soon do you want your letter?
do you want your email/phone call answered?

I’d say there are too many admin staff in the wrong places. DH works an admin role and is run off his feet. When I worked there for a short period before I started the career I have now, I spent a huge amount of time twiddling my thumbs. I told them when I left the role needed to be part time at most. Still hired someone new full time.

Recently I haven’t been to an appointment without there being at least two receptionists who spend most of the time chatting to each other and doing nothing else. I know the secretaries tend to be very busy though.