Being Mr B-liar

Okay. let's just for an instant suppose we are an esteemed albeit trigger-happy world leader (with bad hair and bad teeth) faced with the age-old quandry of how to make Barney the NHS dinosaur slightly more cost-effective. (Because, to make him markedly more cost-effective would cause a dangerous rip in the fabric of reality, resulting in the dark denizens of the dungeon dimensions flooding through)

So Barney is floundering because it's understaffed, purple, and simply gay: short of doctors and nurses, provision of care is mediocre and governmental targets to cut waiting lists and times result in a paradoxical reduction in patient care, and an increase in expenditure (additional staff employed to audit waiting times and lists, additional salaries)

The answer to underfunding and understaffing is, of course in our esteemed opinion, to employ more managers to ensure that existing doctors are carefully audited. Essentially, the doctors and nurses that remain should be flogged harder to conform to targets; the more doctors and nurses leave, the harder the remainder should be flogged.

IT is of course also a solution, replacing quarrelsome and fatigued doctors and nurses with computers is clearly a step forwards in the right direction, nevermind that the IT managers themselves are not themselves audited, and half of them being rejects from the public sector don't have the cranial capacity to figure out how to switch on a PC.

Let us hypothetically consider the ludicrous case that diverting expenditure away from fat-cat manager's salaries and overhyped IT managers into recruitment might bolster the flagging numbers in clinical staffing, and contribute towards smoother running of services, and less payouts to locums earning inflated rates double those of regular, full-time doctors in training positions.

pause.

but that would actually involve understanding how the health services work.

Therefore, of course the answer to our problem is to employ more managers.

Quod erat demonstrandum.    # Re-minisce denies liability.2/20/2004 04:14:00 am