NHS pissing away resources

[Princessfluffy]

TWO letters arrived fo me today from the NHS. The first said we haven’t received your sample back for the bowel screening programme. The second said we HAVE received your sample and gave me the results.
Money cannot fix this kind of wastefulness, meanwhile we do not get the health treatments we need due to lack of funds. I have a litany of similar examples, it’s so dispiriting 😭

I've had several procedures over the last few years and the amount of duplicated letters and literature they've sent me is unreal.

I worked for the NHS for 20 years, they are beyond wasteful.

Same as PP, I worked in NHS and can vouch for their wastefulness. It’s one of the reasons I left, it didn’t sit right with me.

Letter generated by computer without any human intervention?

My friend who is a nurse told me she had to explain to her manager what she was doing so that he could then go to a meeting to explain what she was doing. She said the problem was that he didn't really understand what she was doing. What is the point of this non-clinical manager? We need to get rid of this manager and employ an extra nurse instead. My friend could then go to the meeting if it is really necessary and explain what she has done herself. The rest of the time she and the other nurse can actually offer a frontline service.
Why we have 651 marketing and PR managers in the NHS, I have no idea. We need to get rid of these people and spend the money on frontline staff.
All NHS Trusts should have standardised policies to reduce workload and the need for managers.
There should be a couple of cheap in-house maintenance staff in each hospital to avoid expensive contractors.
We need to reduce targets and only focus on targets essential for patient safety. Reducing targets should reduce the need for NHS managers. It will also enable frontline staff to make the best decisions on their own without being focused on meeting pointless targets.
We need to be able to sack NHS staff who don't do the job-and have clear procedures for getting rid of staff.
We need to start charging people for no-shows at the GP. We need to start charging people who got to A&E for non-emergency care. We need to charge health tourists who are taking advantage of our NHS system. We need to charge people who have not lived here for at least two years.

Were they mailed the same day?

Good question. Our post arrives about once a week. Alternative forms of communication would probably be more effective and cheaper. The cost of a stamp is crazy now.

We had boxes of catheter bags left over from when my mother died , all sealed . We were told to bin them .
Also had incorrect medical supplies delivered for my grandson, none were opened, again, we were told to bin them .

I work for them too and totally agree! Plus the communication is terrible!

How much are stamps? In the U.S. 78c to mail a letter, but I don't know how that translates to your money.

There are wwwaaayyyy too many managers, many of whom have huge salaries, directors, deputy/assistant directors … total waste of space and resources

NHS letters are franked rather than stamped so I'm assuming NHS has a contract with Royal mail.
A first class stamp iirc is £1.77

£1.70.

I couldn’t agree more!

I just had a look on Google, where it said it’s about 73p to the US dollar, and it’s about £1.70 to send a letter, so about three times as much as in the US from what you’ve said!

Well, there is definitely room for efficiency improvements, but these standardised policies aren’t going to standardise themselves and train themselves out. Your two cheap maintenance people probably aren’t going to know how to change a HEPA filter or service a blood gas analyser.

Good, well co-ordinated healthcare costs a lot of money. Just look at how much more countries, equivalent to the UK in levels of obesity, spend.

Sacking useless people requires an efficient HR service, which the NHS doesn’t have. This kind of performance management is generally left to clinical, professional and technical staff, which they are not qualified for, and which takes them away from their patient facing or clinical support practice.

It’s a mess, but your solutions are not really solutions at all. It needs to be properly funded and properly managed.

My mum has been in hospital since last October & last week went into a care home, her prescriptions are delivered once a month without ordering, the first month she was in her prescription was delivered, I told the delivery man she was in hospital but he refused to take the drugs back, I contacted the surgery & pharmacy to cancel the prescription, the next month it arrived again, I rang & cancelled it again, it has taken until this month & me threatening to make a complaint to get it cancelled. The surgery rang to book her in for her annual review in October, I told them she was in hospital & due to her illness she had no mental capacity to do the review, they have rung every month since even though I keep on telling them the same thing "just in case she has got better" even though I have told them it is permanent & she is going into a care home, apparently they can't take my word as they don't have her permission for me to speak to them, I've stopped answering the phone if they ring now. Her meds must cost hundreds a month, it must cost them money to have someone ring up each month & have a 15 minute call with me arguing that mum doesn't have capacity & is in hospital/care home, I checked her online medical record & nothing has been noted of the calls, I'm tearing my hair out, it's distressing enough that she is on end of life protocol without this.

What do you suggest for all the NHS estates maintenance issues not based at a hospital - the cheap in house people are based at? Who will do clinical engineering?

A lot of services are provided out side of hospitals

@fairyring25 whilst I agree with a lot of what you said cheap maintenance people I don’t. Hospitals are complex buildings with huge systems and plant rooms required to run them and cheap maintenance people won’t manage that. We pay for contractors for expertise. I work in nhs estates and the building being safe and functional is as important as it being staffed with nurses

One of the scary and fascinating aspects of the Darlington Nurses tribunal was all the NHS witnesses- all of these HR adjacent mangers with wanky titles- there were managers managing mangers who all were then managing teams who were doing what? Not pure HR. Not WHS. Some DEI but not quite. It just seemed to be bullshit busywork jobs that were in their own ecosystem completely unattached from clinical matters.

The money the nhs waste is absolutely breathtaking

They have to be binned because you could have contaminated them. Obviously it would be a psycho who would take medicine and inject something nasty in to it, but it has happened.

Also in order to return something there needs to be a person to take delivery of them, check they are OK and put them on the shelf.

If I ruled the world NHS managers would spend 1 week a year as HCA doing a late shift, followed by an early, then a night, before repeating the shifts.

Exactly this - there’s always that risk that someone could have tampered with them - you also wouldn’t know whether they’d been stored correctly and so sterility etc could be compromised.

Also - as a DN - I visit some houses that politely putting it, are filthy. You would not want supplies that have been stored somewhere like that

I actually disagree. Things have been cut back so hard there is very little waste now.

There will be little things that happen in a big corporation like mistakes with automated letters and too many managers hired in better times that are now very expensive to let go.

But my experience is that every penny is counted. Stock is counted and minimum amounts are held. There is very little bank and overtime. Agency workers have all but disappeared. Any spending has to be carefully considered and justified to seniors.

The fact is that it is woefully underfunded, and has been for a very long time.

As an aside they are not allowed to take back anything prescribed once it has left the pharmacy, incase it has been tampered with. It has to be destroyed.

Work for NHS also.
Absolutely spectacular wastage gos on.

• Managers for everything. Honestly some areas it's crazy.
• The IT is also constantly changing, different systems in different trusts. The NHS app not lining up with other services within the NHS like your maternity notes or patient portals etc. so mush money ( and managers) in different IT areas that don't work together.

One system across the whole country would save time constantly handing over information between trusts. May even cut paper wastage.

• Medication wastage.
• Single use items opened and not used.

We also have a culture problem that costs money

• Calling ambulances when it's often quicker to get to hospital by car / taxi.
• Appointments wasted by people not turning up.

-People not taking health advice and doing prevention Ie brushing children's teeth!

• Demand for treatment on NHS which has no medical benefit - Gender surgery for example will cause more health problems long term than it will ever solve! Nobody with a healthy and working genital and urinary system should be having surgery to destroy it.

Medication wastage is an interesting allegation.

Yes, there is a problem with medication given to patients never being used but repeatedly ordered, and undoubtedly there are GP practices that could undertake medication reviews more effectively. But in hospitals? Hospital pharmacy departments work continuously to prevent wastage and to minimise costs, and incidences of wastage are monitored to inform future actions.