To think the NHS Significant job losses are a good thing to get rid of management pushing paper around all day and increase the number of hands on staff

[Husbandrippedmeoff]

What does this mean, will they be slashing the number of people who work in management?

Do you work for the NHS are you worried?

You wanna try being a surgeon!!!

Agree, didn't have all this ineptitude before managers were put in place.

No I don’t, hence I’m not in their role any more than they would choose my role. Not insulting clinical colleagues, they’re fab. They don’t want to do the admin the public seem to want to inflict on them.

How patronising. Long term gaps in teams cause pressure and dysfunction. I was stressed in one of my roles as the dynamic caused bullying and I nearly killed myself. Is that good enough for your goady shit post or not? Or you can ask t my family Thats watched me turn into a stammering mess that lost all confidence. Glad you have obviously never had to go through it.

My neighbour works for the local ICB and was telling me tonight over the garden fence how bad the atmosphere is there now. They've been told that workforce costs need to be reduced by 50% by end of this year and things are turning quite toxic as everyone is almost turning on each other as having a more valid reason for not being made redundant. From what they've been told by senior management it is being implied that the lower band 3 and 4 admin roles are likely to be hit first. She has a couple of those roles in her team and was quite upset as she said they are amazing workers who keep their teams running with all their support but she is pretty sure they will be cut but then she has no idea how the team cam function in the same way with the same outputs if managers are all having to do their own admin

It's the plethora of management roles in the NHS that needs to be reduced. I talk from experience

The NHS is not NHSE.

Precisely, and all the 1000's of people who will lose their jobs will have to look for jobs which are currently not out there. Of course many will claim benefits which in my view completely defeats the object. I don't think that they have thought about this deeply enough. Plus, DHSC staff are running a VR scheme so how it will all play out is anyones guess. So much for get Britain working!

I work in a seperate part of the NHS but it's obvious that if they cut all of the admin support there is no way that the band 6s and above will have time to do all of that work for themselves on top of their day to day and the extra work they will have for losing some of their peers too and having to pick up their workload. Unless they completely redesign the structure of how the ICB's operate and cut out some functions totally they will just end up having to re hire the admin down the line or they will lose everyone through burn out!

@NoctuaAthene has explained what NHSE do very well yet everyone still waffling on about hospital type management.
NHSE is too big and needed to be streamlined. But also runs vital services that are used by everyone. Do you like the NHS app ? That's run by NHS E. Do you like being able to pick up prescriptions at a pharmacy directly? Yes that's an NHSE run system. Do you think it makes sense to have 1 single email system that operates across the NHS so that people can easily email each other eg GPs to specialists and to different hospital? Yep again NHSE.
So there's lots of good and necessary things being done by people who are not doctors but which benefit patients and clinicians.
Calling everyone a pen pusher is very lazy.

We have the right amount of managers in my department but half the clinical staff. We can't find any for love nor money however much we advertise. There just aren't enough training for our profession. The salary and progression is great but we a t find anyone and the department is really suffering.

A big organisation needs organising. It needs admin staff, office staff, bed managers, ward managers, educators, etc. there possibly could be a slimming down but I’m not sure any slimming down will be in the right place.

our hospital has cut non clinical jobs and there’s so few admin staff that people are getting letters about their appointments and operations after their appointment date. So they’re obviously missing appointments. That’s not saving the nhs money.

I used to work for the nhs I’m now a senior lecturer. The universities cut admin staff but the admin work still needs doing. So effectively they just pay me 55k to do data inputting half my time and I spend much less time actually teaching 🤷🏻‍♀️. Fine by me but seems a bonkers approach.

Paper is not being pushed around as a fun activity. They are procedures for the safety and well being of patients. The fewer the administrators means that medics have to do this work.

HSJ had published the areas which will be targeted. They are principally Staff working in assurance, regulatory, performance management, communications and engagement roles

www.hsj.co.uk/integrated-care/revealed-the-icb-staff-targeted-for-redundancy/7039077.article

Yeah I was NHS admin and when people left they weren't replaced and workload was given to me. I had the workload of 4 people when I left

@Theeyeballsinthesky ah ok that's interesting I'm not sure if my neighbour was aware of that when we spoke. I'm not sure what all of those areas are though and whether she falls under them

the letter only came out 2 days ago so maybe not. The article goes on to say

“However, the letter underlines the need “to maintain some core staff, such as recently delegated [specialised] commissioning staff”. It also stresses ”the need to maintain or invest” in finance and contracting; “strategic commissioning” functions, including “building skills and capabilities in analytics, strategy, and market management”; and development of neighbourhood health”

Yes so that does seem to replicate what she said about them retaining the higher bands who hold the clinical skills or expertise and the less skilled lower bands (I.e admin) will not be seen as crucial moving forwards

That sounds about right. Doctors are highly skilled and much higher paid than admin staff. You want doctors focused on their clinical role and everything else delegates surely?

In the hospital I work in, nothing would happen without the admin staff. The admin budget has already been cut to the bone and each time, services get worse. Sure, the computer and online systems could all be updated to work together and everything done electronically but it will be a massive and expensive and long undertaking and a lot of the clinical staff etc will point blank refuse to learn it, as they did with voice dictation software etc. They cry about doing any admin they do have so getting any more of it, meaning less time with patients etc will not go down well. The hospital can’t fill the vacancies they do have, so an ultimatum would result in them leaving and needing even more expensive locums to plug the gaps. Locums mainly refuse to do admin as well so the situation will get worse. Things run better with more admin staff, not less. If it means just cutting middle management, the work they do will be piled on lower pay grades which are already overstretched and underpaid for the responsibilities they have already.

Exactly. Since they cut secretarial support for consultants and outsourced typing letters the number of people turning up in the wrong clinic or on the wrong day, or missing appointments altogether has increased.
My consultant types her own letters while she is talking to me. She is always harassed and rushed. Getting the letter done is the most important thing. I know that nobody at the GP practice has time to read them anyway. She keeps asking them to put new painkillers on my repeat list and they always deny all knowledge.
I ended up in the wrong clinic for something recently due to clerical and admin errors. Such a waste of everybody's time and resources. It is the 3rd time it has happened to me and I am an experienced nurse. It is impossible to speak to anybody to check these things - you just have to turn up and try to sort it out while there.

Cutting assurance and regulation seems very short sighted! The ICBs already mark their own homework but now they don't even want that marking checked externally?

That's genuinely terrifying. Based on my experience working in NHSE until the end of last year, that will mean people will die as corners are cut by ICBs who don't always understand that the figures on their spreadsheets represent people receiving, or not receiving, healthcare.

I work in the charity sector and spent time working in the NHS managing income from trusts and foundations who fund research and treatment. It is a skilled job that carries stress due to the expectation and need for income.

Communciations roles in the NHS often ensure staff and patients are aware of vital information. This is also a skilled role.

The admin side of the NHS isn’t perfect by a long shot but neither is it people just mindlessly doing admin. It covers any number of skilled professional services.

Actually I work for an NHS ICB and can absolutely confirm there's a shed load of paper being pushed around and around , dozens of pointless recurring meetings that simply regurgitate the same verbal diahhrea every month , pointless admin tasks that will never result in anything useful. NHS management is a dinosaur and could be culled without any affect on patients.