Calling in from the Hospital Bed

Posted by Kevin Brady on Wed 26th July 2006 at 10:49 AM, Filed in Industry News,  IT Strategy,  Project /Programme Failures

When I started up this Blog some weeks ago, I aimed to make three postings a week. Unfortunately, it would seem that I have failed at the first hurdle due to ill health. I am currently in hospital with a severe Kidney infection. An x ray yesterday indicated that a number of small Kidney stones are aggravating my condition. All I can say is that irrespective of the diagnosis, my one preoccupation is PAIN RELIEF and keeping strangers out of my bed. YEAP you heard it, keeping strangers from sleeping with me!

Whilst being beside myself with pain, I have been tortured by being put next to someone called “Donald” who normally lives in a nursing home and who suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Last night it took two security guards to restrain him from getting into my bed . 

With reference to my article, Management Consultants Friends or Fow it is clear sitting in a large ward with nurses and doctors working at the coalface of the National Health Service, how government mismanagement has affected resources and morale. In the previously mentioned article, I point out the billions wasted on Management Consultants over the past years in order to help improve service efficiency (statistics actually show that NHS productivity is actually falling) and implement a unified patient record system which is on course to being a + £30 billion project failure. It is clear that the government could make immediate and significant reductions in its NHS budget deficit through an immediate cut back in the use of ineffectual and expensive NHS Management Consultants.

Unfortunately, I see no evidence that the government is preparing to make these important and necessary cuts. In fact, I see evidence of quite the reverse. For example, I was sitting in my local Costa Coffee when “Out of the Blue” a stranger sitting on another table lent over and started talking to me. In fact, he was taking a coffee break in order to soak up some time before attending a presentation by one of the Big Five Management Consultants. The stranger stated he was a retired director of a major newspaper and now a trustee for a major Croydon based NHS trust.

He stated that his trust was in a desperate financial state having wasted a lot of money on:-

• Excessive staff pay rises in relation to increases in government grants

• Failed computer systems & Business Process Reengineering Projects

He felt that the Management Consultants were a large part of the problem. He was concerned that Management Consultants had infested so many aspects of the day-to-day running of his Trust / Hospital that no solution could be devised without their involvement. 
His issue was how could the presentation hope to offer a workable solution when criticism of the presenting management consultants was totally off-limits.

Furthermore, he believed that the presentation was more about the consultants searching for a new fees pipeline than involving themselves in making the hard decisions necessary to bring the Trust’s finances back into the black. He felt that any proposed solution from previous experience would be primarily aimed at being palatable to the Trustees rather than one offering a truly effective long-term solution.

Let’s hope this local Hospital Trust makes the right decision!

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