Can someone tell me what the NHS Chief Executive actually does? There's a new one: David Nicholson. He's moved from being CE of smaller chunks of the NHS to being CE of the whole caboodle. To mark his appointment, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt issued a press statement thatmade its way via our press office to everyone on our e-mail. I suspect that most of us working in the surgeries, clinics and operating theatres of the NHS don't care who the CE is and would prefer just a simple statement of fact to all the blather.
‘David is taking up the reins at an exciting time’, said Patsy. Exciting for whom? I think difficult or worrying more apposite.
‘Building on the achievements of Sir Nigel Crisp …’ who rather surprisingly and suddenly seemed to take early retirement and move up to the House of Lords, ‘… David's challenge is to ensure that the NHS continues to achieve even better results for patients, while restoring financial balance’: so you, working at the coalface, can expect to have to do more with less, much as you have previously.
‘We have made huge strides in recent years, with waiting times at record lows and impressive progress in the drive to save more lives for patients with cancer, heart diseases and stroke.’ Note the ‘We’. Any huge strides are due almost entirely to the staff putting their everything into the NHS, despite continual reorganisation of the service by the politicians, who seem happy only when they are tearing up last year's BIG IDEA in favour of this year's BIGGER IDEA. Community hospitals — pootling little things! Close them! Oh, hang on! On second thoughts: tertiary centres — far too big! Close them! Let's have community hospitals.
‘I would like to say a big thank you to Sir Ian Carruthers, who has done an excellent job as acting Chief Executive during the last few months.’ Really? Could someone tell me one thing that he's done?
David Nicholson said, ‘I am proud of the NHS and its staff,’ who will continue to have to worry about where they will be working in the next few years, and what the increasing privatisation of the NHS (which those at the centre will continue to deny) will mean for their jobs, their pay, and their pensions.
‘This is a pivotal time for the health service.’ It's always a pivotal time for the health service. I have on my shelves many political publications from the last 20 years. The same phrases crop up all the time. And you'd think that politicians were the first people ever to think of the patients.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2006.
