Tory MP claims ‘overpaid and utterly useless’ managers not Government to blame for ‘shambles of the NHS’
The government can’t be blamed for the current “shambles of the NHS”, according to an MP.
Shipley constituent, author and journalist Linda Green wrote to her MP, raising concerns about the current state of the NHS and the issues it faces.
Philip Davies MP wrote back, deferring the blame onto “far too many overpaid and utterly useless senior managers”, claiming the “government do not run the NHS”.
But this has been debunked by the Kingsfund, who say:
Recent media coverage and parliamentary debate suggests that the NHS is bureaucratic and over managed. The argument goes that much NHS management is unnecessary and that over the past decade the number of NHS managers has increased at a rate disproportionate to need and to the wider growth of the NHS.
The NHS in England is a £100 billion-a-year-plus business. It sees 1 million patients every 36 hours, spending nearly £2 billion a week. Aside from the banks, the only companies with a larger turnover in the FTSE 100 are the two global oil giants Shell and BP. If the NHS were a country it would be around the thirtieth largest in the world.
If anything, our analysis seems to suggest that the NHS, particularly given the complexity of health care, is under- rather than over-managed.
Read the full article here:
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/health-and-social-care-bill/mythbusters/nhs-managers