The NHS
Christ, where to start, I feel like I should be talking to the police not you lot, anyway, brevity is the soul of wit so I shall condense...

1. A department gets a budget, if they don't spend it all they get less next year, thus they have to blow it all on stuff they don't need, normally laptops, colour printers and projector monitors. You can lose a grand in each one. One department had to lose £25000 pounds, that's a nurse for a year.

2. DHL gets the NHS post contract. They guarantee second class post delivery in 2 weeks. The Trust, to save money, decides to send all appointment letters out second class. Result, clinics sit empty fully staffed by consultants, nurses, technicians and many £100'000's of equipment because the patient didn't get the appoinment letter BEFORE their appointment. Total saving to the NHS, about 7p, total cost £10'000's.

3. Fiddling the waiting lists. There are many ways this is done, my favourite is sending appointment letters to people who are coming up to 'breaching' the waiting list target (no more than 3 months, 4 months etc). They are purposely sent giving the person very short notice so they can't come in, 'shame' says the NHS, you have to go to the bottom of the list again. Result, waiting list targets are met. This has become significantly easier with the help of DHL.

5. The '4 hour A&E' target, patients will be processed within 4 hours. Again there are many ways this is fiddled, the main ones are the patient isn't admitted on the system until a few hours have past or the patient is discharged and readmitted after 3 hours or so. The best one they came up with was the Clinical Decision Unit, which is basically a bit of A&E that was renamed and moved 10 feet to the left, the patient is moved to CDU and the target is met.


I could go on.....
( Brandy_Bumwinkle, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 19:29, Reply)