During a random breath test during the festive season, Suffolk Police find a quarter of a ton of antibiotics in the boot of Thérèse Coffey’s car. The former health secretary is reported to say, “They’re for personal use and giving to family and friends. I know the law, sonny, as in I know the chief constable.”
The first chief organogram officer is appointed by an NHS trust, as producing the Barclay organograms takes higher priority than operational effectiveness.
The front page of the Daily Mail announces the appointment of the Millionth NHS Manager. There are now 100 managers to every nurse. An incandescent Steve Barclay responds by expanding his organogramisation policy.
Patricia Hewitt’s bureaucracy review, Re-liberating the NHS, recommends the abolition of all national targets bar five core objectives. She also suggests that ICBs are renamed Perfectly Coterminous Teams and grouped into nine Simply Holistic Alliances. Savings from reusing old supplies of stationery are “the low hanging fruit”, she says.
The government announces it is rejecting the NHS Pay Review Body recommendation as “too low” and instructs the hapless reviewers to come back with a higher figure.
The DHSC then admits it’s an April Fools’ joke. On Twitter, the famously jovial Jordan Peterson invites outraged nurses to get a sense of humour.
MiP’s plans for a Million Manager March, demanding the restoration of extensive national targets (and an intermediate pay point in Bands 8 and 9), are abandoned when guidance on the Hewitt 5 includes hundreds of Mandatory Service Suggestions, and the source of the Mail’s February scoop is revealed to be “a bloke down the pub, who was pretty pissed, but seemed to know what he was talking about”.
Roger Kline publishes The ‘Snowy White Peaks’ of the NHS: Snowier and Peakier, as a follow-up to his original 2014 report on race equality.
Elsewhere in academe, an analysis of NHS organograms by Professors Hoddit and Doddit of Strathclyde University concludes that “the NHS is dangerously under-managed”. Everyone stares blankly and carries on regardless.
Steve Barclay wins the coveted HSJ Penpusher of the Year Award. The incandescent health secretary instructs the Health Service Journal’s owner, Wilmington Healthcare, to publish an organogram so the Daily Telegraph can name and shame faceless event organisers.
Meanwhile, in private Barclay expresses doubts about his organogramisation policy for the first time.
‘NHS – The Musical’ opens in the West End, inspired by the ABBA show, ‘Voyage’. All parts are played by a hologram Jeremy Hunt. An incandescent Steve Barclay orders the production company to publish an organogram so the Daily Telegraph can name and shame faceless creatives.
General secretaries of Britain’s trade unions go on indefinite strike until their ruling bodies stop asking, “Why can’t you be more like Mick Lynch? He’s funny and people like him.”
In a shock Commons statement Steve Barclay announces that the organogramisation policy has been a ghastly waste of time and money.
North of the border, health unions reject the Scottish Government’s ninth Full and Final Offer of the 2023–24 pay negotiations.
A repentant Steve Barclay sets fire to a massive bonfire of NHS organograms in Whitehall. Officials stop him throwing himself on the conflagration. He resigns to be replaced by Deputy Prime Minister Matt Hancock, back from the political dead because he ate animal genitals on TV.
In an act of atonement, Steve Barclay crawls to Wellington House to kneel before Amanda Pritchard in the snow. He then applies for the NHS management training scheme, but is persuaded instead to retrain as an orthopaedic surgeon.
I solemnly swear I shall eat a box of mince pies for every prediction that does not come to pass.
Have a great festive break! You deserve it.
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The government’s Health Bill, finally in front of MPs, provides a statutory framework for the chaotic reforms of the last year. Rhys McKenzie sets out MiP’s view that, as it stands, the bill is another costly distraction that will centralise power but deliver few benefits to patients or staff.
Managers are crucial to reshaping the NHS, but were completely ignored in the last government’s workforce plan for England. With a new plan set to be unveiled this spring, ministers mustn’t make the same mistake again, says Rhys McKenzie.
A year after it ordered tens of thousands of job cuts in the NHS in England, MiP is urging the government to “come clean” about how the NHS will be run after the changes.
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