16/02/2020
The 'Being there's' ...
A very senior, but totally clueless, NHS manager who singlehanded led her PCT to the border of bankruptcy by giving away millions to neighbouring PCTs. Eventually she gto dropped with a payoff of nearly £600k and within 3 weeks started in a very similar role at a neighbouring PCT.
That's how they treat people 'that need to be taken care of' in the UK. That's not patients of course, but family members and acquaintances of current and former politicians. That’s the ‘curse of NHS London’. The NHS in the London area is still stuffed to the brim with that lot. I pity the good people who have to work underneath who have to cope with these big babies to get some actual good work done for real patients.
Said manager had the interesting habit of arriving at a meeting, late of course as that shows your important, starting with long stories about the meetings she'd just attended and boasting about the people she'd met there, without ever being capable of telling something relevant about what was discussed or decided there, usually followed by telling for which meetings she'd have to leave soon and what people she'd probably meet there, without ever mentioning anything that might be discussed or decided there. Before and after her performance we usually exchanged some practical information among ourselves, the other attendants, and discussed to sort actual problems often deprived of any managerial context, though occasionally we could get a bit more relevant information from some other people who actually had read the minutes and papers of the meetings their manager attended.
And as you would expect by now, she usually introduced herself with the phrase 'Do you know who I am? I'm ... ‘ . As if being related to one of the political founders of the NHS had given her the birth right to strangle the NHS.
Strangely, I loved to work for that PCT. A lot of good people trying to manage the trail of unmanageable mess their boss left behind. And apparently I left some very good work behind, as several years later at a different NHS organisation I found that one of my colleagues there was using some my tools (still MSAccess based) and scripts to enable his work for that organisation. (Hi John!)
And, before you ask: yes they too had a 'needed to be taken care off' senior manager, again with authority to make decisions that could wreck their organisation. Not by accident that was probably the first NHS commissioning organisation, of which NHS London had decided to take away the lead-commissioner role for a big trust located in their patch. That says it all, I'd guess, taking away the toys of the manager to avoid further self-harm for the organisation (and several of its neighbours) instead of throwing out the idiot. Guess otherwise NHS London would have been orderer to 'take care' and parachute him somewhere else in a job where he could do even more harm (otherwise it would look like a demotion, wouldn’t it?)
Don't know why I remembered this this morning; truly didn't meet anyone so devoid of any sense of reality over here in NL, though surely they must exist too, as here too there is an 'invisible employment agency' serving the circuits with people that have to be taken care off.
The official label is sometimes 'political appointments'.
But that doesn’t apply for whole of the UK, as in the rest of the country NHS managers often are very capable. Unfortunately, the idiots in the London area NHS organisations decide what becomes the norm.
Maybe that’s why London still has a high population of one-person GP-practices (a few very good with a dedicated doctor, but most a bit crappy. Maybe that’s why London still has some very bad hospitals (as well as of course some of the best hospitals in the world). And certainly that’s why despite a lot of good people, good GP-practices, and good hospitals, NHS London is still very average, if not below par.
