Re: .
Good Management is Good Management.
Bad Management is Bad Management.
If you tell Good managers that their goal is not shareholder
value, but rather improving the Patients experience if hospital,
then good managers will achieve that.
So it's isn't fair to reject out of hand the idea of running the health service more like a business. I would find managers who have shown themselves to be excellent at producing results in very large companies, by taking hard decisions and allocating resources effectively.
It may be that in the past they allocated resources to achieve maximum profits. But the goal could be changed, the skills to effect change, take decisions, and allocate resources are what is needed, and these skills are more evident in succesful businesses than in public companies.
We also can't absolve the government of blame in this. The government spent money building things, but didn't allocate the funding to run them, hense state of the art facilities lay empty.
Now you don't have to be a genius to figure out that that
if you're not going to use something, it's a waste to build it, and the money spend building it should have been given to existing hospitals to keep beds open.
The problem with the health service long term is about structures and management. It's also about better preventative measures, the smoking ban, better diet, exercise etc.
But the immediate problem is about money. Yes, they've poured in billions extra, No, I have no idea where it's gone. But the current fiasco is completely solvable with correct spending. And correct spending is the ONLY thing that will fix it.
We have patients using hospital beds who should be in Nursing homes. Nursing homes are cheaper than hospital beds. So why not move the people???.
Because if you move them you free up hospital beds that will be filled by sick people. So you're still paying for the hospital bed, but now you're also paying for the bed in the nursing home.
This isn't some intractable problem. It's not rocket science. It's a deliberate thought out allocation of resources.
None of the parties are willing to tell the truth. That in all probability we need to raise taxes.
My worry is that given past experience we'll probably get the tax rises, but the service won't improve in line with it. And that's where the excellent managers come it.
-Rd