PCT staff fired on Friday rehired …when?
Filed Under (Coalition Government, Health and Social Care Bill, Primary Care Trusts) by Paul on 06-04-2011
Following my post last week on the possible resurrection of PCTs to act as a safety net for those parts of the country that will not have organised GP Commissioning Consortia in April 2013 there has been an interesting juxtaposition in London.
The only problem with this possible policy development is the fact that across England PCTs will have already been done away with – in most places by the end of March, and everywhere by June 2011. This means that if they are to act as a safety net they will have to be resurrected. Most Members of the House of Parliament would be surprised to learn that PCTs had already been abolished before either House had collectively voted for that outcome.
Monday’s Evening Standard, reflecting on the House of Commons statement that afternoon, noted the fact that only the Friday before – April 1st – some 1400 PCT staff had been made redundant.
Nigel Edwards from the Confed noted that if Government policy was to wander in any number of new directions that needed PCTs, “We may need to rehire some of these people – and that is astonishing!”
“Astonishing” is a good way of putting it. How is it that NHS London has managed to abolish its PCTs – at the cost of 1400 redundancies – before Parliament has decided to abolish them?
NHS London decided last autumn to bring forward all the management savings from the PCTs into the financial year 2009/10. This meant that there was insufficient staff for all the PCTs to continue as managed organisations. (In any case NHS London has wanted to merge PCTs for some years, so this policy of cutting managers early and heavily brought about their desired policy objective).
This has meant that in London they successfully abolished PCTs as management organisations some weeks before the clause effecting the change has even gone through one House of Parliament.
All of this looked OK provided the NHS reform juggernaut was to carry on and abolish them in any case.
But, as of yesterday, jumping the gun by getting rid of 1400 staff that may just still be needed in the future, begins to look as if it may have been a bit premature.
Add to that the bad luck of the Government’s hesitation being announced 3 days after the premature abolition, and things begin to look a bit messy.
It’s not quite clear where the Government rethink will lead, but there is a real possibility that one of the outcomes of the listening exercise could lead to something like PCTs being needed. In which case these staff may well have to be re-hired.
It’s just as well that these set of NHS reforms are all about saving money in bureaucracy isn’t it?
In fairness Paul, you haven’t explained that the PCTs are being filleted to put their bare stripped-down essences into ‘clusters’.
As the clusters would have been created anyway, as a rationalising measure, it’s not the complete meltdown you imply. I.e. There will be managerial capacity at subregional level .. albeit managing a far bigger footprint, with a new staff, somewhat removed from the communities being served, saddled with the challenge of finding their feet and preparing to absorb functions from the doomed SHAs.
I don’t think for a moment that’s ideal. In fact it’s a recipe for chaos rather than effective management, and the people involved won’t know whether their clusters have a temporary existence or a more permanent one now.
It all begs the question, however, why the senior management tiers of the NHS .. David Nicholson and his ten SHA chiefs .. just rolled over and allowed the system they are responsible for to be put at risk in this way by a SoS who had such contempt for Parliament that he pushed this through?
The NHS looks like a man trying to change the wheels on his car whilst driving it at speed towards a cliff.
[...] had done it sooner but, as Paul Corrigan notes, even though the NHS bill has not yet been passed, the restructure has already started. Across the country, PCTs have been merged and staff have been [...]
Dear Paul
I have a different view and that is that in this ‘pause period’ of listening, not much will change fundamentally and the reforms will go ahead. The horse pulling the change carriage has bolted and the expectation has been created amongst GPs.
The other assumption that is made that many staff will be rehired. I cannot see this happening. In any well run business, the bottom 10% of employees (usually with performance related issues) are liberated (General Motors, Jack Welch, in his time, is a good example). Many of the people in PCTs do not have the leadership skills and tenacity to drive forward the massive change agenda and efficiencies that are required – in fact we need only to look at the local authority cousins to see how more skilled they are at this than the NHS
Management cost reductions are necessary in bloated and overspent PCTs. Funny how we never talk about ‘manager quality, productivity and effectiveness or value for money’.
The real danger is re-hiring at the same time as building GP commissioning. This is cost-layering that will exceed the existing management costs of 152 PCTs.
The NHS would also do well to look at the running costs of ‘duplicate Boards’. There are savings to be had and money to be re-invested where it matters – serving the customer.
Best wishes
Caroline