Health services ‘at crossroads’
Tuesday 23rd November 2010, 3:00PM GMT.
Julie Garbutt, the chief executive of Health
CONSULTANTS from the UK have launched a major review into the Island’s Health Service at a cost of nearly £800,000.
Health Minister Anne Pryke said that the review was needed because the Island’s health, community and social services were ‘rapidly approaching a major crossroads’.
It will be carried out by a healthcare advisory team from one of the world’s largest professional services and accounting firms, KPMG, which has carried out a similar review for the NHS.
Julie Garbutt, the chief executive of Health, said that the cost was justified because consultants would be working with her department for six to nine months and would be deploying a large number of people. She said that they had specialist skills and were world leaders in their field.
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So the first act of Julie Garbutt’s expensive reign as saviour of our health service, apart from appointing a host of under managers, is to employ someone else at £800k to do her job. Just about sums up the parlous state of affairs within our out of control government.
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what an absolute joke and shocking waste of taxpayers money in these difficult financial times. All it says is the highly paid health minister, senior civil servants and multitude of senior health managers are not capable of essentially doing their job which is to run the health service and decide on strategy. Can you imagine private sector business calling in external consultants every time they needed to review strategy, management would all be fired. A complete disgrace. I can perhaps understand why an organistaion the scale of the NHS may need this but for a small Island, rubbish. Sack the management and get people in who can do their job . Good to know where your 2% extra GST will be going
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Remind me again why we employed this woman if she needs to employ others to tell how to do her job. All she has done since coming her, that I read about is spend £1000′s per day, in employing others, who only seem to close down front line services.
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I thought KPMG were in the parade, have a walk over at lunch time and ask them direct how to do yourr job. What ever next.
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Why do we let them get away with this ?????????
Jersey and its people will soon be brought to its knees financially. I am totally sick of it all.
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steve – at #2
Actually, I think you’ll find that most large private sector organisations do bring in consultants every time they need to review their strategy.
Surely if Health are spending £3/4 million on consultants that implies that it is more than one persons work and not just something that ‘this woman’ could have done on her own!
An awful lot of money – but only time will tell whether it was money well spent.
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Here we go again, Uk consultants 800k,
waste of tax payers money. The mind boggles,
hey its only 800 k
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I totally agree.Ann Pryke needs to wisen up here.If the CEO uses Consultants to understand her service,what hope is there.!
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Ask Anne Pryke – she may give you the answers !
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This review is long overdue. My only concern is that the consultants will come up with many sensible recommendations which will then be not be implemented because of potential political fallout. A similar review of social security and housing should also take place.
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A bit more information about this “crossroads” would be helpful. Happy to get professionals in, but £800k seems ludicrous when departments are supposed to be cutting back. How many nurses etc would that pay for?
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Sack her if she has to get outsiders to do her job and sack Pryke too for employing her in the first place
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What are the findings likely to be.
For starters – Judging by recent reports not enough money is available to pay for the health of the elderly, so social security payments need to increase
The Hospital swimming pool closure was a bad idea
The money isn’t there for a good and proper service so Islands will have to pay more. That’s it and it cost You readers nothing.
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Judge Jeffries (1) You have said it all. But why Julie Garbutt making the announcement, where is the minister, in her bunker? Civil Servants Rule – OK.
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imo, the key issue with a review is not the cost – reviewing an organisation the size of Health, with a 9-figure budget and over 3,000 staff, can’t be done very cheaply – but whether it’s honest, and (if it is) as Dave (#10) says, whether the recommendations are implemented.
‘Honest’ can perhaps best be described, by describing its opposite: Some time back, I worked as a research officer in a States Department, and was instructed (1) to recommend and sound out reputable names in the field who would be willing to review the Department, and capable of doing a professional-looking job; (2) to scope the review, by listing Departmental activities and possible areas of concern within said areas (so far, so good); – but, (3) to make sure that the review came to the conclusions the management team wanted…
I can’t say that request (3) was a huge surprise – I’d come to expect that sort of thing. But it was the most breathtakingly cynical in a long series of such demands.
I suppose I should have brought a case for constructive dismissal, or some such. At the time, however, I was so disillusioned and demoralised, that I simply gave in my notice, and left the job immediately after completing steps (1) and (2).
This all happened a number of years ago. The review, of course, has never taken place.
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I once attended a presentation by two professors from Templeton College (Oxford University) who said, “Management doesn’t have the monopoly of good ideas.”
It appears that the highly paid C.E.O of Jersey’s Health Department has very few – if any – ideas ideas of her own, hence her having to call in KPMG.
Surely all that will be learnt is the Health Department has to cut it’s coat according to it’s cloth. They can’t spend what they haven’t got – most families running a budget could explain that to Julie Garbutt.
Now that these consultants have been paid £800K, it means there will be even less money to spend on Community and Social Care.
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Is there any reason why the consultants had to come from UK when we have offices for KPMG in Jersey???
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OMG. This hurts. Trying to reduce spending and they have to spend to save. It’s a classic. Easy to justify 1% of a £100m budget (I don’t know what the Health budget is but must be up there) on a review like this, so Anne Pryke, who probably is a lovely person but I don’t know about her management/finance capabilities, signs off on it …
KPMG, loving it – I do hope they’ve got some track record in healthcare as otherwise we’re paying £1k and £2k or £3k for the seniors and won’t realise benefit.
Their own financial team should be able to steer a financial review.
So, healthcare experts it had better be.
Then, one must assume that the budget for this has already been made – otherwise they’ll need to find the money somewhere … Oh, but weren’t they getting some freebie on an accounting dodge from Soc Sec out of the pension pot or something.
This is a bit sickening. One only hopes that they do actually deliver results. My view is that surely it would take anyone with half a clue about 1 day to find £1m of savings to pay for this consultancy, so hopefully it will bear fruit.
Fingers crossed.
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There used to be a time that when a new chief was appointed he or she would assess the whole situation by going around with eyes open, listen to staff and watch them. do some research and then take action use her / his judgement to take action and improve things. Hence the saying “New brooms sweep clean” Nowadays they borrow the broom at great expense, have lunches etc. Get rid of her ! Now !
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So there IS money to throw around !
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What a shocking waste of taxpayers money.
I think the calibre of Julie Garbutt has just been exposed for all of us to see.
Why is it we keep bringing these people in from the UK – they cost us a fortune.
Can someone please tell my why this review was not part of her brief ?
No one told us about this prior to her appointment!
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To put the cost of this into perspective – isn’t it roughly the same as the amount spent on the Wiltshire police report?
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Anne Pryke will be gone in the next few months, then we’ll get some other ‘promise you the world’ new politician, then they’ll spend another 800k on another review.
Why not just buy much needed equipment with this 800k…
Seriously, these public servants really do not have a clue. The spend tax payers money willy nilly and that’s why we’re in the trouble we are today.
Can’t wait for GST to get to 20%. Heard it all before, these people bore me.
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Is this why Health took money from the Social Security fund? We asked an experienced local doctor why Health were claiming they had to pay to revalidate our GPs and the comment we received was “it is absolute nonsense as GPs pay their own revalidation.” We also understand that Health is charging Social Security when a patient has a blood taken at their GP’s surgery which is then tested at the hospital. Who owns the hospital these days?
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Blue Knight (16) “Management doesn’t have the monopoly of good ideas.”
More to the point; I once had an off the record conversation with a KPMG Partner regarding political reform in Guernsey. She had been alarmed that, at the time, the Guernsey politicians took everything she said as the gospel true, when in true it was just an informed opinion.
The lesson being that the consultants may, that is may, have a few bright ideas, but it is for the likes of Julie Garbutt, and Anne Pryke to come up with the answerers.
As often as not consultants are just the ‘fig leaf’ behind which poor or weak managers hide. I LOOK ON WITH TREPIDATION.
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The long awaited CIVITA report has recently been published. It was not cheap and it included recommendations, most of which have not been implemented so far as I understand. Surely the most cost effective plan would be to make sure all recommendations have been acted on and see what effect this has BEFORE starting a new review. Furthermore, if it is found that many of the CIVITA recommendations were not acted upon, then it must call into question the value of such reviews.
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It is very easy for everyone to shout about expensive UK consultants. In this case the cost is entirely justified. Health is facing severe financial constraints. It has been poorly managed over the years, when times were good this did not matter so much as the States just threw more money at the problem. Well now the money has run out and we are going to have to accept massive restructuring in the way health care is delivered and funded in Jersey if we want to retain the sort of health care a developed country should have. KPMG have an extremely qualified team that should enable Jersey to make the right decision rather than another expensive mistake. As for Julie Garbutt, she is excellent but her day job is to run the department, she does not have a plethora of high quality managers at her finger tips, she has a small group of individuals, some of whom have been in post far too long. It would be wonderful if Jersey had managed to cultivate visionary, intelligent and highly skilled civil servants to deliver this work “in house”, but they haven’t. I think this is the right decision and I wish her well in her efforts.
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What is this if not just more of the same…a disgusting waste of money..we have emergency health leaders on a grand a day and still they churn out this tosh…more bits of paper to hide behind…but hey the Taxpayer will wear it ..he’s just a mug.
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Where is the new health system that cost £12M of taxpayers money and why are we still paying contractors for that work when it was supposed to be available in October? Its about time somebody got to the bottom of whats going on at that Hospital.
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My wife had to be taken to A and E recently. The attention she received was second to none, the staff were suberb. If the rest of our hospital runs this way we do not need interference from so called experts from the UK. Let them put their own house in order before they come over here and waste our meoney.
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