From: Simon Dodds, Clinical Director, Heart Of England NHS Foundation Trust
Subject: NHS reforms

As a national service improvement award winner I speak from a position of reality rather than rhetoric when I say that the current ambitions for NHS reform cannot work because no one in the NHS knows how to implement them.

This ignorance is historical and systemic – and treatable.  The knowledge gap that the NHS is not aware it has (blissful ignorance or Johari blind spot), at any level including DoH, is in a subject called Operations Management: the body of knowledge that describes how to design, deliver and develop processes and systems.

I have never met an NHS operational manager who has be trained in OM – or a clinician for that matter (though I would not expect doctors to have this skill) – and the reason seems to be twofold: first that no-one sees the blind-spot (Johari window) and second that there is no accredited training for healthcare OM because of the first reason.

I have learned that OM works just as well in healthcare as it does outside – it is not that healthcare is different in some way – and that with the benefit of OM training a 20% improvement in productivity is possible and in the time frame.

What appears to be difficult is raising awareness of this blind-spot within the NHS executive organ – the step after blissful ignorance is painful awareness – and the Government at least are demonstrating some humility.

If the rest of the NHS doesn't then we are sunk – patients, NHS staff, and taxpayers. We all lose.  

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