It’s early morning. The sky looks like it wants to cry.
In the garden, by a tree, still naked from the excesses of winter, an advanced party of daffodils is raising its spears through the grass
I’m wondering what to write about. Shall I cheer you up on a Monday? Arm you with five things to do to clear your inbox?
If you want to have a great weekend, next weekend, the work starts on a Monday… that sort of thing?
We could have a conversation about the futility of No19’s cancer plans. Without a workforce plan, without the people, there will be no improvements.
How about a joke:
George Washington couldn’t tell a lie; Donald Trump couldn’t tell the truth; BoJo can’t tell the difference.
This is the NHS and there’s always a long list of stuff that cries out to be written about.
The thing about writing this eLetter is that the readership is unique.
Health and care people are probably the most highly qualified workforce in the country.
Everything from health and safety training through to Degrees Bachelor, Masters, Doctorates, professional qualifications, continuing professional development. Clinical and management qualifications.
All of that and…
… I think we share the pursuit of excellence. We like passing on the good stuff. We are fellow travellers on a journey through health and care that is far from perfect, more uphill than down but we know there’s room at the top and the view is magnificent.
This is an audience that is unusually well informed… across the issues. On top of things… and very sharp-eyed.
It is because of the sharp eye of two of you that I am able to write about something that is as irritating as it is stupid. As daft as it is unwarranted. As exasperating as it is insulting.
So, thank you, Prof John… you see, I told you, more qualifications than a set of DH accounts. Sharp-eyed and on-it.
Over the weekend John got in touch, to tell me he’d spotted something that he knew would spoil my Saturday, ferment my Sunday and get me sitting in front of the screen at daybreak.
Something he had to get off his chest and he knew, once he’d passed it on, I’d have to get it off mine. See, I told you. Fellow travellers.
Prof John had spotted something on Twitter, posted by Rob Knott @Procure4Health… well worth following.
Rob monitors the HMG contracts-finder website.
Seven days ago a contract was awarded. It’s worth between £42m and £21m and runs for 59 days, ending 31st March.
There were 7 winners.
Six were the usual suspects on the framework agreement; Deloitte, E&L, KPMG, McK, PWC, Newton and a new one to me; ‘Bramble-Hub’, which looks like a sort of Rowton House for consultancy people.
What are these big brains going to do for £711,864 a day?
This;
‘System Planning Support to be made available for the Elective Recovery Programme on a regional basis. Spend of up to £500k per region by 31st March 2022 with an option to extend by 6 months and a further £500k per region.’
This looks to me like a job ICS’s were invented to do; integration, joint-working, strategic planning. Why aren’t they doing this? If the message is, they aren’t up to it… we need to think again, about who’s running them.
Trusts will now have to spend time briefing the Magnificent-7 on the fact they have some very long waiting lists, not enough capacity in the system to make a real dent any time soon, not enough people and the ones that they have are knackered.
They will tell them about;
- validating the lists
- communicating with the people on the lists
- specialist hubs
- syndicating expertise
- regional planning
- workforce fluidity
- prioritisation
- and the use of IT to streamline the system and outpatient’s
The Magnificent-7 will make notes, turn them into a PowerPoint presentation and send them back to the people who briefed them.
The only sound you’ll hear, above the ‘kerching’ of the Magnificent-7’s cash registers, will be the sound of decent men and women in the NHS, weeping at this obscene waste of public money.
——
Post Script:
Since writing this, ITV’s Robert Preston broke the story that the NHS Recovery Plan should have been announced today but it has been delayed because of a row between No10 and HMT.
The details are here. If it’s true it is an even greater outrage.
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.
