To think everyone should read these stats about the NHS?

[Dinopawus]

Roy Lilley and Ed Smith have put out a free downloadable book 200 questions for the future of the NHS. It starts with some facts and statistics.

https://files.constantcontact.com/9bc520cb001/22a76bf4-8c9a-4d78-a1dc-6deecdc16a09.pdf

Some highlights

Two pounds in every hundred is spent administering the NHS

Managers make up 2% of the workforce. Outside the NHS, managers, directors and senior officials in the UK as a whole, make up 9% of the workforce

The NHS spends about half the OECD average on admin and planning; 1.5% of its budgets. Compared to 4.1% in France and 7.9% in the US.

The NHS spends over £350,000 a minute [now where have I seen that figure before?] and cares for 7,000 people every 60 seconds

The number of vacancies across the NHS in England is about 10% of the workforce

The NHS has (per equivalent population) a third of the beds of Germany, half the beds of France

The NHS has less than half the number of scanners than the OECD average, 15% fewer doctors, 25% fewer nurses

In 2022, forty thousand nurses left the NHS ahead of retirement

Social care has 160,000 vacancies

And on and on.

It's a useful counter to the daily mail driven comments about how the NHS just needs to spend less on on loo roll and have fewer managers.

And yet, many of those who work within the service mention the top heavy management system.

The IT systems don’t seem to communicate with one another and that’s a source of frustration for patients and I’m sure, clinicians.

The fact that so many practitioners leave ahead of retirement is indisputable. The reasons for their leaving would need to be disseminated to look at the trends. I’d imagine that, for many, it’s burnout, trying to deal with a crumbling system and the sharp end. And the sharp end is not the managers.

For context, I sit on both sides of this as both a clinician and head of department. My frustration with the daily Mail and right wing talking heads is that apparently the NHS has plenty of money it "just" needs to use it more efficiently and have fewer managers.

And yet we have a workforce crisis. Why not let managers manage so that clinicians can assess and treat patients?
Why not have administrative staff doing the administrative parts of clinical work?

Do senior managers in banking or law really have to complete the admin associated with pay, training, annual leave, off duty or do they have clerical staff to do it?

Is using cheaper gloves going to provide the budget for more hip replacements? (a definite no, if they tear).

We'd love joined up IT, it's a no brainer, but crappy IT isn't responsible for leaving elderly people on the floor for hours because there aren't enough ambulances available.

I'm mainly heartily sick of the "the NHS just needs to..." experts and the data in the article is useful to counter some of the madder claims.

The stat is about “managers” not about management. How many non-clinical employees are actually classified as managers, a truer picture would be to give the percentage of clinical ( nurses, doctors etc ) staff compared to non-clinical staff. A lot of auxiliary staff (cleaners, catering staff) are employed by agencies s in not in the equation.
As always the devil is in the detail. For every manager there may be 20-30 non-clinical working under them. If you do a quick calculation based on the approx number of NHS employees, 1.6 million, that gives 32000 managers. With an average of 30 underlings gives a total of over 50% of NHS workforce - non-clinical. This is just a rough estimate and might be wide of the mark, but using just manager figures in this book minimises the actual number of non-clinical staff.

I can't comment from any level of personal expertise, but I feel your pain as I work in the charity sector.

I'm paid above average salary, but well below a corporate salary, in a non service delivery role. My work makes the service delivery safer, more efficient, and more cost effective.

Most people are naturally hideously inefficient workers, so find it hard to see the strength in other's skills (for balance, I'd be rubbish at service delivery).

The NHS can piss off sending me letters including a page about the new digital service though. I am a) already signed up, b) pissed off because the service doesn't work yet and c) astounded that I had access to a fully online managed booking system in 2007.