Lean Healthcare Academy response to McKinsey Report
The Lean Healthcare Academy, leaders in the field of training, implementation and sustaining improvement activities across the whole Health Economy are championing 'Lean' as an effective solution to ward off potential job cuts in the NHS.
The Lean Healthcare Academy, leaders in the field of training, implementation and sustaining improvement activities across the whole Health Economy are championing "Lean" as an effective solution to ward off potential job cuts in the NHS.
The Lean Healthcare Academy, which has 26 NHS Trusts and related healthcare organisations among its national membership, is responding to a shock report, in which the Department of Health has been told that the NHS in England will need to slash its workforce by 137,000 - 10% of its workforce- if it is to achieve its planned £20bn savings by 2014. Now, the Lean Healthcare Academy has entered the debate by suggesting that Lean is one way forward in helping to achieve sustainable service transformation across the NHS, without the need for massive job cuts.
Lean Healthcare Academy manager Wendy Gauntley said: "The NHS would do well to learn lessons key to Lean thinking. Many NHS Trusts have already discovered the benefits of Lean by introducing pathway projects that have transformed working practices, slashed waste and cut costs dramatically. Others would do well to take note. The savings to be achieved can be significant. More savings mean less jobs lost. This is not rocket science, merely simple common sense."
The jobs loss estimate was given to the Department of Health in a confidential report commissioned from global consultancy firm McKinsey and Company. It made clear that cuts would need to be felt as much among clinical staff as administrators.
The report, said to represent "purely advice," as opposed to government policy, recommends a range of potential actions, including a recruitment freeze, a reduction in medical school places to avoid oversupply in five years and an early retirement programme to encourage older GPs and community nurses to make way for new blood and talent.
It reckons up to £600m could be saved by acute providers if those with above average ratios of non-clinical to clinical staff cut their administrators down to nearer the average level.
Politicians from both the main parties have moved swiftly to reject the NHS cost-saving recommendations contained in the report and the government has said it does not believe the right answer to improving the NHS now or in the future is to cut the NHS workforce.