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NHS reorganisation No 3,493,233

Followers of my blog will have seen the NHS question about how many reorganisations have we had. We've yet another. The number of PCTs (Primary Care Trusts) nationally is to halve. This means merging East and North. (and then probably HoB and south).

It would be nice if people would stick with one structure.

There is a quotation
(Which sadly does not appear to be a true quotation)
We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
But has to have been originated by someone. The web link shown goes through the derivation which appears to be more linked to an anonymous British Soldier WW2 than any Roman or Greek General called by a name perming 2 out of (Gaius, Galus, Petronius and Arbiter).

From the NHS: "The NHS has just over a year to reduce the number of primary care trusts by around half and slash 'at least' 15 per cent of 'management and administrative costs' to deliver the government's promised £250m savings."

I am not sure that the savings will happen, they will probably be swallowed up in "change management costs".

Comments

Graham Smith said…
It seems that current thinking within the DOH is that PCTs nationally will be reconfigured to ensure a 'one to one' relationship with Social Services boundaries.

As the primary objective is to reduce bureaucracy in the NHS, I suspect further reductions in the number of PCTs (e.g. county-based PCTs swallowing up unitary-based PCTs) may then become apparent as the costings for this first stage reconfiguration become known.
John Hemming said…
That is true. Of course in Birmingham we divided Social Care to fit the PCT boundaries.

It is also important to look at exactly where savings come from mergers. There are clearly some costs that will be reduced (fewer meetings of boards, fewer members etc), but large organisations are not inherently efficient.