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back to article NHS trust axes 600 jobs, IT staff up for chop

A hospital trust is to slash up to 600 jobs – some of which will be IT and back office staff – as part of a £60m cost saving plan. The Royal Berkshire Hospital Trust, which employs 4,500 people, was unable to provide a breakdown of job cuts in individual departments. It said the axe will fall in human resources, IT, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Should have seen it on the news

    This was on the local news last night - they were interviewing some manager or PR guy (dunno who) from the trust and the interviewer asked several times about the impact of the cuts on jobs.

    The only answer the bod would give was "We are committed to providing excellent care for out patients" (I paraphrase). Do you detect the fault in the answer? Yes, that's right - it's an answer to a **completely** different question! Even though he was asked the same question several times, he seemed to either be (a) unable to understand English, (b) was stupid or (c) ...errr ...I'm running out of ideas.

    Don't you just LOVE the way that people who are employed in a public capacity to provide services for the public, and paid for by the public at large seem to consider themselves completely unaccountable to that very same public when it suits them?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      double shafted

      well the poor guy didn't have much of a chance did he? -he's screwed either way, PR man or manager, it's a toss up as to which of the 2 is more useless. they're probably on a par for flat out lying, idiocy, & detachement from the real world though i'd guess.

      i count myself lucky to have never had the misfortune to meet a PR manager

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    2. scrubber
      Reply Icon
      Terminator

      Gotcha

      Maybe the trick is to then ask the question he just answered:

      Int: "What's the impact on jobs going to be?"

      PR: "We are committed to providing excellent care for our patients"

      Int: "What level of care are you committed to providing patients?"

      PR: "We will be laying off 600 staff, mainly from IT and backend systems."

      PR: "Damn."

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  2. HighlightAll

    Because

    you can do that with an iPad.

    Where's Simon to lift my spirits?

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  3. Ku...

    You have to cut the admin...

    If you just cut administrators without cutting the admin work they do/did then what happens is clinical staff end up becoming administrators...

    Serious, strategic overhaul is whats required not window-dressing cuts to "backoffice" without thinking through the over all effect on operations...

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmmm...

    Is this The Royal Berkshire & Battle Hospital NHS Trust? I assume it didn't make good on it's promise to clear it's debts by 2007 then?

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Old news, it just made the press.

    Already happening for us. My PCT is cancelling all temp contracts, that is one entire department and of my team, 3 members of staff. Gone. We have to save 50 million. 4 of 10 PCT's in my city are under financial difficulties and being looked at for their problems.

    Not that any of the work is going you understand, it merely gets transferred to people who don't have the skills, and therefore it will only get worse. I won't scare you by telling you which departments and front line services this cull affects. Or which department has gone.

    Not wanting to rant about GP's but the money grabbing scumbags are now entering a phase where they are putting through ops and referrals BEFORE they have to pay from it out their wages. So every little pointless op that people don't need but the PCT pays for is being rushed through. Because GP's won't pay for it when they have to foot the bill. Of course this money is coming out unplanned and of course coming out of budgets this year. So even more staff will go as we get closer to the switch over. 6 fold increase in some ops already, it's only been a month.

    God help the NHS because the conservatives aren't.

    But now ask me how leicester council can condone £40000 for Ipads?

    Anonymous as I am in a PCT.

    Icon because Guy Fawkes was right.

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    1. elderlybloke
      Reply Icon
      Pirate

      Old news, it just made the press. #

      To Anon Coward,

      When you have a medical problem , don't go to your GP.

      Go to the Casualty / A&E Dept and wait your turn while the serious cases are dealt with.They will keep coming and coming.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      SIMPLY NOT TRUE

      I've never heard so much rubbish in my life.

      The cost of operations is NOT going to come out of GP drawings (it's not a salary - GPs are self employed contractors) even after the changes. And operations are NOT being rushed through - there is no mechanism for GPs to do this. Do you think GPs have suddenly written to all those people on their lists with varicose veins and non-malignant moles etc asking them to come in so they can be "rushed through". And GPs don't decide the waiting lists - they simply refer to the appropriate hospital or community service. These then set their own priority.

      6 fold increase in ops in 1 month already? Hmm, strange that, because operations are usually decided well over 1 month in advance. Add in the amount of time it takes for a patient to present to a doctor, and the time for them to be referred, seen in clinic and listed, and it is impossible for there to be an increase in operations already. They wouldn't even have been seen in clinic yet in most areas, let alone the PCT receive a bill!

      Either you're deliberately lying to make a political point against GPs, or you're an absolute idiot who works for a PCT. Either way, it's no shame that people like you are about to be fired. You represent the lower end of quality for a PCT employee, and you're not worth my taxes. Good riddance.

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    3. Displacement Activity
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      @Old news, it just made the press.

      This is total, utter, bollocks. It's astonishing that someone who works for a PCT has so little understanding of how the system works.

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  6. adam payne
    FAIL

    If in doubt axe IT

    "Let's axe IT and outsource it" mentality is still alive and kicking then.

    Haven't they realised that you end up paying more in the long term.

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  7. Tron Silver badge

    Tories...cuts... What did you expect?

    The real problem with the NHS is the requirement to provide a public service. If they just ignored all the sick people, I'm sure they could run it like a well oiled machine, and bring it in spot on budget. I mean that's the point of it, isn't it? Not actually alleviating suffering and curing people, but hitting budgetary targets.

    Honestly. Without a Tory/Tory-whore coalition, people would still be labouring under the assumption that public services were services funded by the public for the public good. Such extreme naivety really should be considered a crime.

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    1. Displacement Activity
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      @Tron

      The health budget for every man, woman, and child in this country is £2000. The cost to the average household is £4000. The NHS net expenditure in England was 45.4B in 97/98, and 93.4B in 08/09 (both at 07/08 equivalent prices). And so on; figures from SN/SG/724, House of Commons library. However, it omits to mention how many households can actually afford to pay £4000/year.

      Question for you: who exactly is being "naive"?

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  8. David Neil

    Give it a rest Tron

    All parties were going to have to make cuts, we all know why we have no money, the sensible thing is to try and work out how to deliver the necessary stuff as efficiently as possible, and to get rid of the bits of the public sector that aren't actually essential.

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  9. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    Cutting staff while retaining efficiency.

    Now that's a hard one.

    Calls for *real* management skills.

    Anyone think NHS "Senior executives" are up to *that* job?

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  11. Adrian Midgley 1
    FAIL

    A clever idea

    but I've not worked out how to refer people before they need operating.

    The quality of IT support staff I want to take on when I and other GPs' organisations take over the useful* functions the PCT currently provides will also have a sufficient understanding of temporal flow and of the business of the organisation to understand that.

    * some of them are.

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    1. Displacement Activity
      Reply Icon

      Post your own message

      >The quality of IT support staff I want to take on when I and other GPs' organisations

      > take over the useful* functions the PCT currently provides

      There's no budget for that; good luck. As far as I can make out, there's no budget for anything. It's curious that the white paper suggests that some PCT staff could be redeployed to consortia. Presumably they're expecting them to do this on a voluntary basis.

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  12. Bram
    Paris Hilton

    Cuts

    This whole cuts thing reminds me of the the Douglas Adams Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books

    In one of the books they come across a group of pretty usesless people who did all the nonsense public sector jobs in an ancient civilisation. The leaders of the civilisation decided to take all the nonsense roles and bung em into a spaceship and blast them into space.

    With all those nonsense public sector people gone the civiliasation entered a golden era, until the whole civilisation died of an ear infection because they got rid of all the telephone box reciever cleaners

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