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Healthy politics?
Enormous budgets, unlimited demand, sixty million customers - unpick NHS management politics.
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After watching Can Gerry Robinson Fix The NHS, Dr Tom Heller looks at some of the key issues involved
This series has given an exciting insight into some of the ways that the NHS is managed and has demonstrated that change can happen even within such a large organisation.
At a local level, within Rotherham General Hospital, Gerry has been able to stimulate some real changes that may well make a lasting difference to the service. People will have to wait less for their investigations and treatment. Many of the staff recorded for the programmes seem invigorated and supported in their work, especially those who wanted to bring about significant changes.
The general manager seems to have re-discovered himself and has been puffed up by some of the success stories within the hospital.Most importantly he has come out from behind his desk and found ways of encouraging innovation and new ways of working that have been initiated from the ‘shop floor’.
"listen to the wonderful workers throughout the NHS and back them when they want to introduce changes"
There is an enormous contrast, however, between these local signs of change and the barriers and structural problems that the NHS insists on imposing from above. The Primary Care Trust finance director, and more dangerously the Minister of Health herself, appear to remain rigidly impervious to the problems within the system.
Perhaps the lessons learnt by Sir Gerry and the hospital’s Chief Executive should now be applied to those higher up the control and command system. Get out from behind your desks, listen to the wonderful workers throughout the NHS and back them when they want to introduce changes that will improve the service.
Do you have thoughts on the management issues raised in the programme or of the NHS in general? Have your say in our forum.
Content last updated: 03/01/2007
About our expert
Tom Heller is a senior lecturer in Health at the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the OU. He has been an academic advisor for several BBC/OU collaborations including Gerry Robinson’s series on the management of the NHS, Anna Ford’s radio programmes on Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and two Kathy Sykes TV series on the science behind CAM therapies. Most recently he has been working as a general practitioner in a deprived area of Sheffield. His latest project - part of the BBC Headroom campaign - aims to demystify some of the issues surrounding mental health and distress.
