Well apparently I may have to because I am over 50 (hard to believe I know). An article I read today suggested that all us over 50's should move over and allow younger people to take our jobs. Simples.
Bit of an economic "Solent Green" really. Initially it kind of seems attractive, lots of time for all manner of activities , but hang on.......how will Ipay for it? Epecially as I may (hopefully) have along retirement. I guess Icould take one of the part time jopbs that are being vacated by all the graduates looking for work. Of course it doesn't really stack up does it (though I may end up doing that). All that experience, knowldge and networks just lost in a moment.
But it does raise a couple of interesting ideas.
Could retirement begin earlier, in a sort of staged way with a partial pull down of pension? Could people like me be offered a person to succeed us in our roles? Could I be actively preparing the next person for my job, and really enabling them to undertake it?
I guess its probably to radical an idea and it certainly made me feel old and just a little bit unwanted. But could a double dip and an enduring austerity provoke the serious consideration of such ideas?
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label productivity. Show all posts
Friday, 27 April 2012
Monday, 26 March 2012
Hospital car parks
Contentious things aren't they? we have all visitted someone and resented the scrabble for change, or even how much we have to pay for visiiting someone frequently and how much it costs. Some people find hospital car parks a very useful metaphor for many issues. Here's one i really like. Hospitals are just like car parks because .......as soon as you build one it fills up.Well I guess that does hold up as an illustration. We are often told there is an over provision of beds in some sectors, yet the beds are all full.I suppose if you restrict parking then people find other means of getting to places, and the belief is that if you close beds and transfer the funds to community services then lo and behold the beds just aren't needed. I suppose as occured in the massive down sizing of psychiatric provision in the 80's.
Hospital car parks are another useful indicator of activity. If you go to your average District General Hospital at the weekend , what do you find? The consultants car park with its designated spaces will of course be largely empty, likewise the admin peoples. Yet the nurses car park (if there was such a thing) will be full as usual. Why so? Probably because patient need doesn't keep office hours and acutiy doesn't drop off at 5pm on a friday. In fact we are now told that mortality rates rise by up to 10% at the weekends due to the non availablity of senior medical staff to advise their junior colleagues (although available on a phone). It has been suggested that this needs to change.
Perhaps we will see all the car parks starting to be as full as the nurses' one?
Hospital car parks are another useful indicator of activity. If you go to your average District General Hospital at the weekend , what do you find? The consultants car park with its designated spaces will of course be largely empty, likewise the admin peoples. Yet the nurses car park (if there was such a thing) will be full as usual. Why so? Probably because patient need doesn't keep office hours and acutiy doesn't drop off at 5pm on a friday. In fact we are now told that mortality rates rise by up to 10% at the weekends due to the non availablity of senior medical staff to advise their junior colleagues (although available on a phone). It has been suggested that this needs to change.
Perhaps we will see all the car parks starting to be as full as the nurses' one?
Monday, 13 February 2012
NHS in shock evidence based revelation!!!
I guess like most people you have been told about the "wasteful and unproductive" NHS. Indeed the current "reforms" (like stripping out £20Billion over the next 4 years) are predicated on this kind of rhetoric. How unfortunate then that a paper profiled in todays press that has been published in that organ of leftist dissent The Lancet by Prof Nick Black (I jest about the political leanings of that august journal) gives the lie to that assertion. In fact it produces evidence quite to the contrary. I quote from todays Guardian online.
" Black produces a slew of evidence that questions the analysis of the Office of National Statistics used to work out the productivity of the health service. The ONS looked at the return for taxpayers by comparing public expenditure with how much patients used the health service and what the outcomes were.
Black's work, the first of its kind, argues that the measures the ONS used do not reflect the substantial improvements in NHS care. It points out that between 2000 and 2009, such were the advances that a baby born in 2009 could expect to live three years longer than one born in 2000.
Black says far fewer people were dying in specialist procedures in the NHS. He notes declines occurred in adult critical care (2.4% a year), dialysis (3.3% a year), and coronary artery bypass surgery (4.9% a year).
Patients' experience of how they were treated also improved. There were annual relative increases in the proportion of patients treated within four hours in accident and emergency departments (2.5% a year) and in the numbers operated on within 28 days of their operation having been cancelled for non-clinical reasons (10.4% a year).
Such was the NHS's popularity that in the annual British Social Attitudes survey, 70% of respondents reported they were overall satisfied with the NHS. This was the highest figure ever recorded by the long-running survey – the lowest was 34% in 1997, at the end of the Conservatives' 18-year tenure in office."
An impressive record is it not?
If all that seems a bit technical then cast your mind back to how long people waited for a hip replacement in the 80's. it seemed quite the norm then to wait 2-3 years.Now we seem content with a wait of 18 weeks.
Could this paper herald the advent of evidence based policy? Now that would be a breakthrough!!
" Black produces a slew of evidence that questions the analysis of the Office of National Statistics used to work out the productivity of the health service. The ONS looked at the return for taxpayers by comparing public expenditure with how much patients used the health service and what the outcomes were.
Black's work, the first of its kind, argues that the measures the ONS used do not reflect the substantial improvements in NHS care. It points out that between 2000 and 2009, such were the advances that a baby born in 2009 could expect to live three years longer than one born in 2000.
Black says far fewer people were dying in specialist procedures in the NHS. He notes declines occurred in adult critical care (2.4% a year), dialysis (3.3% a year), and coronary artery bypass surgery (4.9% a year).
Patients' experience of how they were treated also improved. There were annual relative increases in the proportion of patients treated within four hours in accident and emergency departments (2.5% a year) and in the numbers operated on within 28 days of their operation having been cancelled for non-clinical reasons (10.4% a year).
Such was the NHS's popularity that in the annual British Social Attitudes survey, 70% of respondents reported they were overall satisfied with the NHS. This was the highest figure ever recorded by the long-running survey – the lowest was 34% in 1997, at the end of the Conservatives' 18-year tenure in office."
An impressive record is it not?
If all that seems a bit technical then cast your mind back to how long people waited for a hip replacement in the 80's. it seemed quite the norm then to wait 2-3 years.Now we seem content with a wait of 18 weeks.
Could this paper herald the advent of evidence based policy? Now that would be a breakthrough!!
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