NHS is “drowning in bureaucracy” and lacks good leaders, says scathing report

The NHS is “drowning in bureaucracy,” is beset with chronic problems that successive governments have ignored, and has a “chronic shortage of good leaders” to apply the “common sense” needed to sort it all out, says the long awaited report by the Conservative peer Stuart Rose into leadership in the NHS in England.1

“The level and pace of change in the NHS remains unsustainably high: this places significant, often competing demands on all levels of its leadership and management. The administrative, bureaucratic and regulatory burden is fast becoming insupportable,” says the report by the former executive chairman of the UK retail chain Marks & Spencer. “The whole organisation could and should be made more effective by the application of some common-sense tactical and strategic thinking.”

Many problems in the NHS “are chronic and have been unaddressed over an extended period and by different Governments,” and “more resource should be applied to the development of all management careers in the NHS,” the scathing report says.

Rose highlights three areas …