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Who do you think said this;
‘Clapping for the NHS during the pandemic may have been dangerous because no organisation can be a national religion.'
The national religion schtick was chancellor Nigel Lawson back in the Thatcher era and it’s become a lazy, meaningless trope.
Clapping? Well, can you believe, all of this was said by the Health Service Ombudsman.
Actually, it's the stand-in HSO, Rebecca Hilsenrath, grabbing a cheap headline. Her organisation is in the throes of recruiting a new Ombuddy.
This ill judged statement was probably to impress an upcoming recruitment panel. Let’s hope they're wise enough to look further afield.
The concept of ‘saving the NHS”, that emerged at the beginning of the Covid pandemic was based on worries that having watched the health services in northern Italy become swamped, some pretty crude, early modelling indicated that it could happen here.
Thankfully, it didn’t.
Clapping for the NHS on Thursday nights was initiated on March 26, 2020, at 8pm, by Annemarie Plas, a Dutch woman living in London…
… inspired by similar initiatives in the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, where people showed their appreciation for healthcare and other essential workers by clapping from their windows, balconies, and doorsteps.
The idea caught on, became a weekly event...
... it was an admiring and grateful public that made it happen. The NHS didn’t ask for it and later it was denounced by some at the RCN, saying ‘clapping doesn’t pay the rent’.
The Ombudsman, or is it Ombudsperson, Ms Hilsenrath’s comments were embellished with;
‘[the NHS] is in urgent need of reform’.
The implication it is going to hell in a handcart.
Let me get this off my chest; I’ve always though complaints to be a good indicator of an organisation’s performance and what it does with them an even better indicator.
There is much to learn from them and it's a pretty dumb organisation that doesn’t do just that.
Organisations faced with someone with a complaint, should be prepared to;
- listen,
- sympathise,
- don’t justify,
- make notes, keep records,
- agree a course of action and
- follow through.
Is it a fair criticism of the NHS to say, despite the plethora of reports, inquiries and recommendations very little changes?
Isn't it mostly attributable not to a desire not to be more effective but generally the lack of resource, people and headroom to make changes happen.
Time and again reports into maternity failings are generally down to people, not enough of them and training. Sepsis failings, the same… training and people.
We all know this to be true.
There’s no unwillingness in a service that has seen major system design upheavals and has made them work, not to 'reform'.
Thatcher’s reforms, Osborne's austerity, Milburn’s market mania, treatment hubs that Doc's wouldn't do and fizzled out, Lansley’s bonkers-ness and the mess that is ‘ICBs’ that have come out of nowhere and are going nowhere, or broke.
Good people have had to make bad ideas work.
If the NHS is broken it is politics and policies that have broken it... why should we trust politicians to put it back together?
The Ombud's annual report makes much of the increase in complaints and at the same time boasts that part of their annual strategy is to make it easier to complain…
… no rocket science required.
In 2020/1, I think there were 18,727 NHS complaints to the Ombudspersons. Last year there were 27,479. How many were actually upheld?
Dunno.
What I can tell you is the Ombudsters are responsible for complains across HMG. Last year, in total they dealt with 139,090, up 18% in 5 years.
Of the total only 29,306 complaints were accepted for consideration. About 20%.
By the way, of those 436 were resolved (see chart page 45). All up the Omdoers cost a tad over £40m (see page 103)
If the same sort of percentages are true of the NHS… well, you can do the sums yourself.
In total the NHS handles; hospital admissions, outpatients, A&E and GP consultations, totalling over 528 million contacts a year… 0.0016% complain to the Ombudsfolk
I want to make it clear. I am not dismissing the importance of complaints, many of them representing life changing episodes for people and their families and it has to be said for people's careers and profession.
I am saying the NHS has been battered by Covid and the strikes, has a higher percentage of inexperienced staff with more complex patients than ever.
I don’t doubt there is an increase in well-made complaints over delays and poor treatment which should be investigated and learned from.
I do understand that by the time a complaint reaches the OmBuddhas somewhere in the NHS has failed to resolve it, which is a cardinal sin.
I am also saying a dollop of tropes and abuse from Ms Hilsenrath, who’s ‘look-at-me’ expertise seems centred around jumping on passing bandwagons…
… does nothing to reassure me of her independence neither the cool judgement it might take to be Ombudsperson.
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