Friday 6 February 2009

PCTs 'incapable and useless'


As the latest news tells us of the full magnificent of Lord Darzi's latest reforms, I am not surprised that some 'GP-led centres' will have no doctor on site at all, amazingly really:

"Some GP-led health centres could be run without a GP on site at all times, GP newspaper can reveal. "

So much of this government's reforms involve paying monkeys peanuts to do a job that was previously done by a more skilled monkey for pretty much the same peanuts, no wonder the quality of the service is falling all the time.

Another interesting aspect of the NHS is the fact that monkeys are frequently being hired by monkeys, who are being hired by monkeys ad infinitum. With more and more layers of bureaucracy year by year, the layer of useless monkeys proliferates, while those who actually do work on the front line find their funds cut as the monkeys want it all for themselves. If this continues we shall be left with just bureaucrats. The biggest monkeys of them all are the PCTs:

"PCTs lack analytical and planning skills and the quality of their management is very variable, the inquiry found. The report states: "We consider this to be striking and depressing."

"However, we remain very concerned that PCTs are not yet up to the task of putting these reforms into practice....We heard a lot of evidence about weaknesses in PCT commissioning "

The HSJ has taken this from the Health Select Committee report which can be found here, in fact the original document is even more damning as regards the complete inability of PCTs to do the job asked of them:

"Indeed, PCTs have attracted a good deal of criticism over a long period, often focusing on their inability to evaluate data and identify cost-effective interventions based on evidence."

"Witnesses were critical of the Department's initial attempts at Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) and doubted whether the situation would improve."

"Previous criticisms of PCT commissioning have centred on their inability to evaluate data and identify cost effective interventions based on evidence. Neither the Department nor Mr Farrar elaborated on the criteria which should be used to evaluate PCT commissioning. Neither did they tell us how they would identify the actions that would be taken to address poor performance. "

I suspect that even if PCTs were staffed with intelligent capable staff (which they most evidently are not) then they would struggle to turn Darzi's and the government's reforms into winners, as the reforms are fundamentally flawed down to their very ideological foundations. PCTs are currently in the process of wrecking all the good services left in the NHS, as they are deliberately starving hospitals and front line services of cash, while they throw money at daft scheme after daft scheme. The PCT layer of bureaucracy has always struck me as a waste of space at best, now they are not only wasting space, but they are doing immense harm to any good that remains. It is time that PCTs were blown away.

5 comments:

All Shook Up said...

And they're headed up by political appointees. The CEO job in the PCT I'm most familiar with was given to a card-carrier, a senior nurse with no executive experience - but with plenty of contacts on the local Trades Council. Completely out her depth, of course... but hey.

Anonymous said...

Our local "casualty" (it isn't called that any more) is soon to be "Nurse Led" because it won't be accept "serious injuries".

They took the maternity unit away a few years ago just before demolishing the old hospital (used the land for housing). The brand new one has fewer facilities, but it is very nice.

The nearest main hospital is about 18 miles away, to get there you have to pass through a new National Park and negotiate known bottlenecks.

Nurse Anne said...

It is scary. But the managers sure as hell won't hire nurses to do ward nursing.

They just refuse to hire nurses.

They are even getting rid of health care assistants now and replacing them with 16 year old "cadets". These cadets are on less than minimum wage and are not allowed to do ANYTHING. But they have been put in the same uniform colours as registered nurses. Now the wards have 1 or 2 RN's and maybe 3 cadets.

I have looked for jobs on other wards for a staff nurse position. There are none. IF I want to stay in nursing and get out of my current job than I need to look at advanced practice.

Well fuck that shit. I prefer the nursing model to the medical model so diagnosing and prescribing isn't for me.

I did fill in an application form for a job at Wetherspoons. What a fucking waste of my years at university training to be a nurse.

No One said...

as said over at

http://notdrrant.blogspot.com/

good to see you catching up

nurse anne go work at bupa or similar hospital, thats the future, thats where all the patients will be going when the nhs get disbanded and the patients get some choice

i would just like to point out that coventry pct is especially crap!

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