If I Had A Magic Wand
Ten days on and I wanted to share the parallels between what I observed first hand as a mother to a NHS patient. If I had a magic wand draws on my recent experience and observations due to years of underfunding, and the parallels to the work we do with charities.
So Many Parallels
One of the main parts of our work, and truth be told, the bit I’m most proud of, is supporting charities to understand how they can get the full costs of their services funded so that they can run a robust, efficient organisation.
During our full cost recovery training, we focus heavily on how failing to do that creates and compounds a deficit that impacts on workers’ experience of their roles, compromises the quality of services and, in extreme cases, can create risk for their service users.
So imagine the moment when, up close and personal with the NHS, after a week with my son on a ward, him having been admitted and then three days later rushed for emergency surgery, I realise the NHS is that extreme case. Only it’s not a charity, it’s a public body. And failures could impact on whether people live.
I tell charity CEOs that if they don’t have the financial systems in place to know whether they are being underfunded, they will know in a number of other ways:
- Being overworked
- Never feeling that they have enough time to do their jobs
- Despondency
- Failing, outdated systems
- Poor internal systems, quality control
- Lots of evaluation data and no time to analyse it
- Chasing their tail, feeling like everything is a little last minute
- Doing everything and not having specialists in their role
- Dropping the ball.
Here is what I observed:
- Staff walking down the hallway, clearly having been crying
- Staff complaining that the NHS is not what it used to be
- Poor facilities: a broken dishwasher, lights not working in the ward treatment room, low water pressure in the bathroom, no hot water at times..
- No food for parents, even though menus still say parent and carer menus. They only cater for nursing mothers now to keep costs low.
- Mistakes: incorrect labelling of medicine, mistakes in setting out start and end dates of treatment courses.
- Departments’ systems not integrated leading to missed, duplicated and appointments that are going unscheduled.
The thing is…
I hope Steve Barclay has a plan that goes beyond battling with staff for fair pay increases. I hope he walks a mile in the shoes of any parent / family member of staff member to understand the impact that an underfunded NHS has in day to day.
If I had a magic wand, here are the things I would put money towards, once staff salaries had been sorted:
- People: more, more QA, one point person
They clearly need more people, but what I observed that they needed was someone in charge. Who took ownership and had accountability. Someone who would look at standards, communications, performance management. Everyone cared, that was not in doubt, but you can’t run an effective operation on just goodwill and sympathy.
- Facilities: updated, better quality. Hospitals will never be a home from home but you can’t feel well without a hot shower!
It was absolutely miserable! It was, I guess an unachieving space to get better. The people were great, and I see this all the time, the people are all guns blazing wanting to turn everything around, but they are let down, time after time by the lack of facilities to help them do a better job.
People can’t thrive in a space that looks like it is not thriving. So yes, appearance does matter.
- Systems: integrated, intuitive, HELPFUL!
So many legacy systems that just can’t talk to each other. Systems brought in to make the process quicker, better, leaner and more efficient and more effective. But they don’t work, so everyone resorts to the people power. Billions of pounds wasted in ineffective implementation and weak project management. What a tragic waste of time, money and effort. The hours of wasted energy and effort that could have been avoided!
Important And Critical
So when I say this stuff is important and critical to the survival of the effective service and the achievement of your original stated and desired impact – I really mean it. Unfortunately I saw and experienced first hand what could happen following years of neglect and underfunding.
I would urge all charity senior leaders and CEOs to review the full costs of their services funded, really regularly, part of a regular financial audit – so that they can run a robust, efficient organisation.
If this is something you would like support with, please get in touch.