A senior NHS adviser has warned that management consultants hired by the NHS are behaving like “racketeers” and “arms dealers” in times of war – making vast “spoils” from the Government’s reorganisation of the health service.
Management consultants ‘cash in’ on NHS reform
management consultants hired by the NHS are behaving like “racketeers” and “arms dealers” in times of war – making vast “spoils” from the Government’s reorganisation of the health service, a senior NHS adviser warns today.
In the British Medical Journal, Professor Oliver, who until last year was the Department of Health’s national clinical director for older people’s services, has written that such spending was wasteful and unnecessary.
He called for NHS executives to be forced to justify all consultancy spending and explain why – given the number of “well-paid and experienced clinical and organisational leaders” such management skills did not exist “in-house”.
“If these well-paid individuals lack the skills to solve most local problems in-house, or by learning from other NHS colleagues, perhaps they shouldn’t be leading at all,” he writes.
It appears that management consultants are cashing in on the NHS’s gradual shift toward the private sector. A concept which is both alarming as it is concerning. Tax-payer money is being further diverted away from the NHS and being funnelled into management consultants whom it is said are simply selling back glossier versions of advice they receive via the feedback of NHS staff.
