23 March 2009

A great idea

Between patients in his clinic, a wonderful money-making idea has dawned on Dr Grumble. He is going to set up a web site that will transform the NHS. It is going to be called ratemyNHSmanager.com. Doctors will be able to log in at any time and give frank accounts of occasions when managers have put patients at risk or damaged clinical care in some way.

Please understand that Dr Grumble is not saying that bad management ever happens in his Trust. Oh no. But there may be other hospitals in the land where managers focus on targets instead of patients . The site is for those bad places and for those bad managers but those that work in Dr Grumble's hospital will be pleased to know that you will be able to praise your manager too. Using the wonders of web technology this initiative will be bound to transform the NHS because it will make sure that managers perform in their main duty which is to facilitate great patient care. Dr Grumble feels sure that the government will soon be on the 'phone asking where to send the big cheque to support this great idea. Or they would be. But for the fact that Dr Grumble is not a Common Purpose graduate.

8 comments:

subrosa said...

Go for it DG!

Anonymous said...

Wonderful idea, Dr Grumble.

Your hospital establishment will be so pleased once they chew over your new idea that they will be more than happy to fund you £9000 or so of taxpayers money so you can become an Elite Common Purpose Super Graduate (a graduate - not a member!)

Then you will find the huge network that opens up for you very enabling indeed!

You can then go around all day having your back scratched and doing the same to your cronies.

The world will be your oyster.

You will become one of The Great UK Leaders qualified to Lead Beyond Authority.

All the witching community and black cats are behind you with this wonderful new venture!

Anonymous said...

Genius!

Am Ang Zhang said...

Go for it! Ooops, who’s calling:GCHQ!

The Cockroach Catcher

Amoo2 said...

Seriously Dr G, after the exposure of the disgraceful conditions at Stafford Hospital, and I dont know if you've seen 'confessions of a nurse' on Channel 4 Dispatches yesterday, I think this is a really good idea that someone should start for real, maybe the government itself since the emphasis is now on 'Quality' and especially on 'safety'.

If doctors, who are already regulated by the GMC and will soon have to also hold a liscence and be revalidated every 5 years if they are to keep practicing, then I can't see why should failing NHS chief execs and managers should get away with murder, literally!

The Shrink said...

Geeeenius!

Anonymous said...

I genuinely agree that it's an indefensible situation if doctors - who, with their decisions about referrals and prescriptions, are custodians of public money - can now be rated in this way, but NHS managers can't. Other than by their SHA, the DH or McKinseys ...

I know this was put up as a 'Modest Proposal' - but you could actually find a way to make this work.

However, any meaningful rating system would need some acknowledgment that delivering healthcare requires genuinely shared responsibility between clinicians and managers.

This comment may not win any friends, but here goes anyway. As well as the evident managerial debacle at Stafford, the hospital surely had a medical director in post, as well as a director of nursing. The hospital was staffed by people with GMC, NMC and royal college professional registrations and thus obligations to their collegaues, their profession and their patients.

There is, in short, no way that the dreadful situation in A&E was not well known within the trust.

Why was this so poorly known about in the broader locality? Why did local GPs not have a better clue that their local hospital was, in effect, topping people?

If commissioning had had the resource and priority to have stood a chance of working, then I would also be asking about the PCT. As everyone knows, commissioning was totally ineffective for much of the time in question, and may well remain so now. I don't know that PCT well.

I have not been able to get good answers from the National Patient Safety Agency about adverse event reporting from the hospital, but there are a variety of avenues, short of full-on directly job-and-career-threatening whistleblowing that the people working at the hospital's front-line could have used. Local media would have been one option. I know that there was a very brave whistleblower in the locality.

The management of that hospital failed, and should not be recycled into the system, as has been the tradition with failed managers (whether it's a real fail, like here or in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells - or a fake fail as in the recent SHA-political decapitations at West Middlesex and Barts / London).

But a lot of professionally qualified people, who took a vow of primum non noscere, or similar, were there too, and knew something.

Dr Grumble said...

I know that there was a very brave whistleblower in the locality.
******************
If you are thinking of the one I am thinking of, Andy, you will already know one of the reasons why these things get covered up. A doctor is no good to his patients if he hasn't got a job. And being a martyr is not good for your family either.

Where are the journalists prepared to explain to us why they always trot out the government's line? They are not many. Yet journalists also have professional responsibilities. It's the same sort of thing. You can properly criticise but we all need our jobs. We may be Quislings but Jan Palachs have no future at all.