Is Britain’s Health Service now terminally ill.
Near the end of November came more bad news from the British National Health Service, an institution that many Brits both love and hate at the same time. The truth is that the NHS has simply become too big, too bureaucratic and is in many areas failing though over-regulation and poor management.
Not that it lacks managers of course; I believe there are more managers per bed than in any other country of Europe.
Why is it that the more managers you have the worse the overall performance ends up? Too much working by committee and passing the buck for failure, perhaps?
It has to be broken up; vast organisations just don’t work. Smaller is beautiful. I feel confident the world will eventually understand this; already there are serious calls for the big banks to be split up after the credit fiasco and just recently we read about calls for some of the big British supermarkets to be ‘smallered’. This is significant, coming from one of the “Neo-Conservative” gurus likely to have great influence in the next British government.
Have we passed through a period of worshipping size, power, takeovers, mergers, money, financial domination, vast stock options, fees for lawyers, obscene bonuses and instant gratification?
Economies of scale are one thing, but at some point other factors reduce their value to society as a whole. The bigger an institution of any kind the greater the possible abuse. And sadly, at some time or other there will be abuse, as we have seen so often.
The period of “Big is Beautiful” may be ending, and not before time.
By Chris Snuggs
Learning from Dogs 