NHS England to go is Keir being unreasonable?

[43percentburnt]

I don’t work for the NHS but have friends who do (and are increasingly looking at leaving - in some cases to move abroad).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx29lrl826rt

Is the removal of NHS England a good thing? Or is this a Labour gimmick?

To include an Aibu for Keir -

Yes Keir - you are being unreasonable

Or

Good job Keir, please get rid of NHS England - you are NOT being unreasonable

Yes. It was hideous.

@EmeraldRoulette i think I’m more talking about pre-2013 really; I probably garbled my point a bit! I think the data was better a few years back (can’t remember exactly when it stopped being verified/ audited - maybe 2018 ish?) but I think we still need at least some of the data or how on earth will anyone know what’s going on? How best to actually gather said data is prob another question and I’m not saying every single survey initiative happening right now is necessarily a good thing.

Someone also mentioned NHSE responsibility for IT systems which is another very good point…

We did get a email from Amanda Pritchard just before it was announced on the news.

Some colleagues had an idea that this was coming.

We were in the London office and no one found out before the announcement on BBC

@CaptainWentworth but nobody is saying that the data won't be collected. They're also not saying that absolutely everybody is going to lose their job.

@WingBingo I was actually about to say that it was the responsibility of the CEO to let people know. And you do have to let them know in one go so it sounds like she's done that.

It's really strange listening to people talk about redundancy in the public sector as if it's something really shocking. At my age (49) I would say in private, most of us have had this experience about four times. I have been very lucky, but I've been freelance.

So before that, it happened twice and the second time, there was a call for volunteers, but it was made very clear that volunteers would get a better package than anyone else. My father was terminally ill by then, so I went for it.

My closest friend (55) has been made redundant twice since Covid. That's in the private sector, obviously. We know so many people who have been through it many times. I forget that anybody over the age of 30 doesn't constantly worry about it. Actually, I think she might have had redundancy five times now. And always before the two years is up so they don't have to pay anything.

I work for an ICB and we had the heads up from our chief exec at 9pm last night, which was appreciated - it’s been a truly awful day in all other respects though. I’m in the process of buying a house with my partner and it’s all having to be put on hold now.

On behalf of DHSC. The press is different from the news NHSE received. We’ve been told we are to merge with DHSC

Fair enough @WingBingo thanks for info

And if you’re not checking your emails you wouldn’t have known. I’ve got team members on days off so I reached out as the first they heard of it was via the news.

there is not other to communicate to that many people at once though

I was sitting at my desk with my emails in full view and the announcement pop up genuinely did not land with us until after we’d seen it on BBC news so for some of us there really was no heads up or prior warning. There was a board meeting last night and none of our SLT knew either.

I've been through redundancy rounds 4 times in my career and most of that has been public sector. I don't think it's that unusual. Not all have been made up of voluntary redundancies either, though I think that is usually the case in the civil service.

I'm so sorry, this is appalling.

Yes a lot of my dealings were with an ICB and honestly I have never dealt with an organisation like it. Some of the people I knew from when they had worked in previous roles and they were hard working people but it was like everything fell into a stagnant pond when it hit the ICB, decisions never seemed to ever get made. One simple property transaction, the type that would normally involve a handful of phone calls and emails, involved countless ICB and similar officers round a table, countless legal advisors, and nothing ever getting decided or progressed. It started to raise questions within our organisation about why we couldn't get progress, so a senior director went to a couple of meetings and then the penny dropped. Just a staggering waste of people and time.

This.

Utterly diabolical communication.

This is a terrible way to treat people! Handled really badly!

I work for an ICB in an area that works hard to save the NHS money and ensure patients receive optimum care and treatment. We are one of the few departments that meet targets,come within budget etc with a small,hardworking team of staff.
We have been told that our department must,like every other,lose 50% of staff. No logic. No targeting of sections that actually routinely underperform, overspend etc. Just a blanket ' every section must reduce costs and staff by 50%.
Sounds great to voters. Realistically, will cause problems for their health care. All departments should not be treated equally.

But that’s surely your ICB’s decision on how to do it as there has been no national detail on whether the 50% is even being applied evenly across all ICBs yet. It could be more targeted than that and even then it’s within the gift of each ICB to decide how to achieve it. A blanket 50% cut across all areas says to me that your ICB needs better leadership with more nuanced decision making!

To add, our CEO gave a briefing today and was honest about not having any answers yet as it’s a headline without any detail behind it. No one knows yet what the baseline is for the reduction, whether it’s £ or headcount etc

That is frustrating. Its always frustrating to see that kind of blanket approach, when normally even senior management knows full well which areas are more than pulling their weight and which areas are a huge dead weight.

When I was in the public sector in the pandemic there were some officers I would ring and every time I had so clearly caught them napping /watching TV. It was like they were genuinely shocked to be expected to work. I was normally ringing to chase them for then1000th time too. Meanwhile I was so busy I kept not even managing to find time to nip to the loo! I'd say it was a fairly even split between over productive and dead weights, and if you get rid of the wrong 50% it would definitely be a problem!

I work for NHS England and see patients all day everyday, we are not all managers, I’m a band 5 patient facing practitioner. I don’t know why everyone assumes wrongly that we all just go to meetings and do admin?!? I haven’t been to a meeting in months!

I say this as someone who IS an NHS manager - there are SO MANY MANAGERS. There are lots of managers who are desperately needed and vital in delivering patient care. Each clinical service needs a manager to make sure it runs, a bit like a school having a headteacher. But for every one manager fulfilling a vital function there are also about a dozen extraneous managers for random stuff.

Every time you need to buy ANYTHING from plasters to pens it has to go through about 8 procurement managers to ask you if you definitely need it and have you budgeted for it and have you thought about just not buying it, or buying it next month and can you go away and write a 12 page report on the probability of how many patients might die if you don’t buy it. If we just didn’t employ and pay for 8 procurement people to say no, we’d be able to afford the plasters instead!!

Same with hiring people - every vacancy has to be endlessly dissected by a panel of managers to force you to repeatedly justify why you need a phlebotomist or a stoma care nurse or whatever. Each of their salaries could pay for half a dozen phlebotomists.

I think it's great if funding gets relayed back to the NHS.

What I am loving is X/Twitter going into meltdown as half the folk on there believe what they read online and think Starmer is shutting down the NHS. Scary but amusing.

Really unpleasant, lazy and frankly uneducated narrative here about "pen pushers" and "useless managers".

I have over 15 years experience managing and leading successful healthcare services. I have masters certificates hanging on my wall in social policy and leading in healthcare. This apparently means nothing, and removing my role will mean the NHS will be saved and will work much better.

As a PP said, yes please actually DO make us all redundant. It won't be long until the mistake is realised and we are hired back, and given the level of burn out across my hard working team to be honest we could all do with the break.

I wish all these "frontline clinicians" that are apparently floating about with loads of time to spare all the very best of luck with running the NATIONAL element of the health service 👍 personally I would rather they were seeing patients, but clearly Kier knows best!

I would like to see more things have all the unnecessary and unhelpful burocracy, middle men and pointless protocol removed.

And to add

Safeguarding for children and adults
CYP continuing care
health input into SEND - designated clinical officers
Child Death Reviews
Section 117 aftercare for children and adults
specialised commissioning for children with complex care and learning disability and/or autism
Children in Care safeguarding and leadership
surveillance and assurance of providers

these are statutory duties for ICBs - ICBs are cqc registered - and performed by clinically qualified professionals who work very hard just like frontline services

I don’t see trusts taking this on and it would be them marking their own homework

NHS is the biggest employer in the world.

We are a tiny country..it's insane.