Managing health care

Published: 5 August, 2010

• WHAT is the point in delivering 90 per cent of mental health care in the community (Terror, fear and grief: the story of mental health care, July 29)

when the outcome is Cathy O’Connor throwing herself under a train (‘Kieran’s death was too much for her’, July 29)?

Clearly in her case the “patient pathway” didn’t work.

While the government is looking to reduce bureaucracy in the NHS, gurus in the Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust have different ideas. 

They have just introduced a new system of service line management which leads to some clinicians being elevated to “associate directors” and losing a day of clinical caring each week to spend it managing. 

The effect is bound to be that care is harder to access – there is less of it.

This foundation trust, of course, has decided that management is its own reward and that the more fancy management tools, image consultants and fancy stationery they have the better they must be. 

It may be that they will only be really satisfied when they have “rebranded” so that all their staff are managers and care is just an add-on provided when they have the time in between management meetings.

DANNY BLOOM
Tollington Park Road, N4