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?

How is that going to be paid for?

Good luck to any party that says "our priority for the NHS is to spend £20 billion to network and computerise the NHS and privately owned GP surgeries, which will not involve recruiting a single extra nurse or doctor nor solve the huge shortages in the workforce, oh and will take about 10 years to implement"

Thank you to the knowledgeable posters who commented on my post re QR bracelet. I’ve no clue about the NHS so it’s interesting to see why it would/wouldn’t work.
One thing I disagree on though - documenting actions and treatments absolutely is admin. Looking at a labour ward again:
Value-add actions - direct care to mother and baby
Necessary non-value add - documenting treatments, stock management etc
Non-value add - duplication of effort, manual workarounds inefficient systems and processes

NHS need to enhance the value-add, automate/optimise the necessary NVA and eliminate the NVA. To my knowledge some trusts have solid Lean programs parroting those principles but nothing is done on a national level.

My OH has cancer which requires long term chemotherapy via a 4 weekly drug cycle. It's the same every 4 weeks, starting with a blood test for which they send the bag/paper, then the blood test needs reviewing, then the prescription for chemo drug package is instigated and "pinged" to the hospital pharmacy. Pharmacy can't issue it because one of the drugs is "controlled" and needs authorisation, so they contact oncology to get someone to authorise it, then it can be handed over. Every 2 months a phone consultation with the oncologist has to be fitted in. Then the next appointment has to be made for the next blood test, someone has to post the blood test bag/paperwork, and so it goes on. Exactly the same every month.

You'd think it could be streamlined? No, it's a bloody nightmare. Either they forget to book the blood test, forget to tell us, forget to post the blood bag/forms, forget to instigate the prescription, forget to authorise it, forget to book the telephone consultation, etc. It's a full time job for him, and every step is a different dept, so multiple phone calls to find out who's not done their job! Usually he ends up having to phone his "cancer specialist nurse" as she's the only one who has access to all staff involved and knows the process - he always apologises to her as she should be doing clinical work but nearly every month she gets sucked into sorting out the shambolic admin. Last time, she spent an entire afternoon phoning around trying to sort it out as the next day he was due to start his monthly chemo and literally nothing had been done after his blood test - results hadn't been reviewed, prescription not instigated, etc etc.

@Leakingtoilet lol. You definitely feel there are too many high level managers. On the basis of what ? The feelz or real evidence ?
Someone bases their opinion on 3 visits. No wonder the country is the way it is. Policies made on the back of cigarette packets, Brexit ministers turning up at
meetings without any notes and random mumsnetters opining about things they have no clue about.

@Anotherusernameanotheday ummm what? Where did I mention 3 visits? I thought I made it clear in my OP that I work for the NHS and have done for many years

@Anotherusernameanotheday
i dont think mumsnet has that much sway, that the NHS will change the amount of managers or admin due to mumsnetters opinions.

I work for Adult Social Services. If I want to send some confidential information to someone in the NHS I have to check which trust they work for (there's an overlap of different trusts providing different services in our area). One trust will accept secure email. One won't. The one that won't has to receive it by post. It then has to be scanned by one of their admin to be added onto their system. So a simple job that would take less than five minutes takes a few days when you add posting time.

From personal experience I would say there are too many managers and too much administration!
Communication is atrocious and there is a ridiculous amout of duplication!
The NHS must change to work smarter!!!
My father was under a number of different departments which often resulted in a blood test appoinment being sent by each department within days!!!

The only time my clinic letters take more than a few days post clinic is if I am on holiday. This is because there is no cover for my job when I am off. From consultation to GP receiving letter electronically less than three days normally. Will take longer to reach the patient because of the post. Anything urgent will be typed and processed that day or next day at the latest.

Anyone in our department taking months to get their letters out would be in trouble.

I agree.

Part of my role is building quality management systems, process improvement and efficiency.

What I wouldn't give to spend a year streamlining the NHS with digitalisation, trust alignment, improved communication and new processes.
Would be my dream project, I'd do it for free

There's definitely too many managers. Too many chiefs and not enough indians. And they all sit in their cosy offices, tip tapping at their computers, rubbing their hands together thinking of their salaries.

@Eeiliethya

Totally. I work for an international corporation. Every time I or a colleague attend a medical appointment, have contact with a school, or need to deal with the council, it results in a conversation about the type of impact we could have in a year. The processes are dreadful and an overhaul would benefit all involved.

I'm a band 4 admin I line manage 10 then my band 5 manages me and my team
Then the 6 manages the 5, 7 manages 2 x 6's and some 8's aren't "operational" and don't manage anyone it's a bizarre

But overtime is needed and expected to get all the stuff done If my team didn't want to do it for extra money we'd be really behind

@OhIdoLike2bBesideTheSeaside, there's not a direct relationship between band and line management expectations though - my role is Band 7, and wouldn't usually be expected to include any line management responsibilities.

@7Worfs it depends what you mean by documenting treatment. Each drug needs to be signed for/ documented by the person who administers it. You wouldn’t save time by having someone else documenting each dose as they would have to have something to check that it was given, so it might as well be documented by the person giving it (and this doesn’t even cover the legal aspects of administering drugs).
But if you meant someone summarising the treatment at the end “patient x got five days of antibiotics” then an electronic system should be able to spit something like that out automatically. Should being the important word here. Our system would not give you that information easily - someone would have to interpret it manually as the automated reports are complicated.
We could probably change our system to something that gave more meaningful automated reports but that system may not be as easy to use on a day to day patient facing basis.
Treatment summaries are partly automated “tick box” style reports - surgeries have specific names and codes to identify what has been done - but there is always extra detail added manually such as complications, alterations to plans etc and I suspect this will always need to be done by clinical staff to be specific enough. Not a surgeon but I read plenty of surgical notes.
Someone much earlier on the thread mentioned the wrong address on an appointment letter, sending patients to the wrong area, which led the posterto believe the letters were manually prepared. I had an appointment years ago, automatically generated, but corrected by hand with different email and phone number, plus a note saying that nobody knew how to fix the template.

a doctors view on whether the nhs is over managed Doctors view

tl dr - no it isn’t

I work with the nhs a lot and one of the many problems is the sheer complexity of the problems trying to be solved eg falls in the elderly. Multiple causes, many of them outside the control of the NHS eg uneven pavements, pavements covered in slippery leaves or ice, falls on buses because drivers don’t wait for older ppl to sit down before pulling away, glasses that are no longer the right prescription. We have to meet with so many different organisations to try and coordinate a response but at the end of the day the elderly who fall end up on the NHS doorstep

The reality is not enough managers but nobody wants to believe that. If we want significant change to create a service that can meet the demands of the future it’s not going to happen by magic, it needs managers making strategic plans but they don’t have time because they’re too busy putting out fires. Those earning 8a and above are not sitting with their feet up. However, threads like this and the media do love to complain about managers… the same managers that actually made amazing things happen over the last 2 years including the vaccine roll out. Nurses didn’t do that alone - clinical, admin and management work together in the nhs so stop pitching us against each other. We are one team with the same aim and all need each other.

When you say you manage 10, what do you mean exactly?

@wonkyheadwoes, I think some posters might be conflating line management and management - these are different things though, and the same person might not necessarily be doing both depending on the department.

I just can't envisage how a band 4 administrator would line manage 10 people. That makes no sense to me at all.

@nomorecheeseforme

it happens regularly,
bad luck for the poor band 4 tbh

Going totally digital with an all singing all dancing, very expensive IT system has made my job 10 times harder. It’s shite. It takes much longer to do anything, you can’t find anything, it’s just not fit for purpose.

Band 4 NHS admin in MH services here.
I wouldn't say there's too many mangers but their duties don't match their pay in my humble opinion.
I work around the corner from them so can hear what they're doing most of the time. There's a lot of duplication of what we're doing already. So a referral comes in, we look at it, assign a clinician to check in, get more information, make an action plan. Then in a few hours the 8a manager will come over flapping about the same referral, they have already, having not checked in with us (the referrals team) rang the referrer and done exactly the same thing as us but less efficiently. So that's a band 8a doing exactly the same task that I, an untrained band 4 can do.
I found myself once, having been working since 7am, feeling extremely stressed that I had to cancel a patient who was due to be transferred that morning as we now had no beds. I was in the queue of the local coop having just dropped my kids off and about to rush into work and I saw one of the managers in the queue, humming and buying an expensive breakfast. I thought 'he isn't feeling any of this stress, the stress of bed management, telling people that they won't be moving when they have been waiting ages and they're all really unwell. He's not logging on at 7am after being frantically emailed by the nurses on the night shift. He just gets up, goes to work, buys a nice croissant.
There's so many admin who work so so hard in mental health services. I know a band 5 who supervises 36 admin staff. That's a lot of responsibility!

I'm intrigued.
Why are admin staff band 4, and not lower? Have you got lower bands beneath you?

Yes this is my experience there are just far too many bands and lots of the work is interchangeable nowadays ........and a band 5 for example is not a consistent role across different departments...sometimes they might have 10 staff to manage sometimes none. Reduce the number of bands across the board and pay people better.