NHS opened to public enquiry.
Since September of last year David Nicholson CBE has occupied the unenviable position of running the NHS and its £90 billion annual budget. Though his occupation may certainly be disagreeable, David’s approach toward the reform of health authorities certainly has not been.
Yesterday we have news that he is opening up the NHS to full public scrutiny, with people allowed to analyse and compare the quality of clinical care services as provided through the NHS. This all follows a fundamental progression toward greater institutional transparency.
For me, the underlying motivators behind this decision are two-fold but for this article I am going to focus solely on the business perspective and follow it up later with the social one.
As with franchises in the private sector, to open up information to enquiry immediately establishes a doctrine of efficiency and performance-focussed work ethic whereby each outlet competes candidly with those around it.
The end result: new work intensifying practices that increase the efficacy of the business and reduce costs through competition. In so doing these transformations also highlight and weed out any waste present within operational processes.
One issue with following such a practice is that the drive for performance can beget a reduction in the quality of a given product or service. Here, importantly, yesterday’s news has assured a focus on the quality of a department’s service rather than it’s fiscal performance.
Placing the onus of yesterday’s proposal on quality is not a new step for David Richardson. His employment history is famed for rightly employing the Japanese business practice of Total Quality Management.
This is a management style, which, as the name suggests, leans heavily toward improving the quality of services through the active participation of all staff toward an idealised goal of ‘total quality’. Through this methodology the organisation strives to meet every client’s needs in every possible manner they require. In essence it necessitates all staff to be more responsible for their actions and the quality of the services they offer, rather than merely management as in older regimes.
By apportioning greater staff involvement in decision making and holding highly their participation should in theory ensure that their own needs and suggestions are listened to and acted upon. Who else is better placed to judge and review a service than those who work within this structure every working day?
Yesterday’s proposals are a natural progression of current policy and expose operations to public analysis in a manner that enforces greater efficiency and quality management.
The impact of this and the implications of having this information available I aim to discuss in a subsequent article.
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