05 December 2003
A report critical of health service management is 'misleading', the NHS Confederation said this week.
The report, from the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, said there were too many NHS managers and they were not sufficiently skilled.
In Managing not to manage, one trust chair said too many administrators were 'dead from the neck up'. One chief executive complained of not enough experienced senior staff and poorly trained middle managers.
The report's author, Harriet Sergeant, said: 'Figures released in June by the Department of Health show the numbers of managers in the NHS soared by three-and-a-half times the rate that nurse numbers rose between 2001 and 2002.'
However, confederation chief executive Gill Morgan insisted NHS managers were just as effective as their private sector counterparts.
She added that the Confederation was 'disappointed that the report fuels the popular prejudice that there are excessive numbers of NHS managers.
'Management costs have fallen as a percentage of the overall NHS budget to 4p in every £1.'
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