SIR – I read with horror the page you dedicated to the open letter from Dr Bryan Smith ‘It’s an unholy mess – but there’s a way’ (Worcester News, May 9), who I note from hisbackground, while a Dr, is not one of the medical variety.
It strikes me due to the timing of the letter that it is well and truly politically motivated.
Yes, the NHS is an unholy mess and the bureaucrats such as Bryan Smith [chairman of NHS Worcestershire] have made it so, having been in position since 2006.
From my perspective, one who has had contact with some of the services provided by the NHS, it is overdue for a radical shake-up. My overwhelming impression is that the NHS needs to get back to the provision of basic good quality medical and health services, affordable to the taxpayer, without the non-medically qualified running the show.
The medical staff, when one actually gets to them, generally do an excellent job, but the bureaucracy definitely gets in the way and by all accounts is wasteful and totally unaffordable in today’s economic circumstances.
If management cannot achieve a productivity improvement of four per cent a year – much less than most businesses have had to do during this recession – then the NHS really does need some better managers.
The NHS needs a good kick up the rear and having people with experience and training in the medical profession (eg the GPs) to procure the services to be provided is a start. Otherwise we could see the NHS going the same way as ICI and taken over by a better run rival.
COLIN FRIEDLANDER
Worcester
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