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Come and meet CNO Jane Cummings - 10th November 5.30pm King's Fund London Book Here
In conversation with Roy Lilley.  Chat, network and enjoy a glass of wine. Closing soon; tickets �39.95

#WhatsLaLite4? 
News and Comment from Roy Lilley

LaLite may be the Secretary of State for Health but thanks to the Health and Social Care Act there's not much he can do about anything.  He is a spectator in the Ashya King debacle and almost everything else seems beyond his reach. 

 

Who runs the NHS? I don't know but it certainly isn't Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt. Despite being related to Sir Oswald Mosely and Queen Elizabeth ll, LaLite does not run the NHS.  

 

He may be able to speak fluent Japanese but no one is very interested in what he says. He is pretty well powerless. He is like a Satsuma vase on the sideboard... decorative.  A roll of Hanebisho is more interesting and useful. 

 

Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey are far more powerful... I'll explain.

 

LaLite can't end the Mafia-like strangle-hold some companies have on our car parks and neither can he command how many sausages there are on a plate of hospital food. He may have been like two peas in a pod with David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford but he cannot dictate how many peas there are in the dish at St Anywhere NHS Trust.

 

LaLite, panicked by pictures of pap, passing for hospital meals, in the Daily Mail, has done all he can. He's been out, put on a funny hat and seen for himself how meals are prepared and presented. He's seen the best... his problem is; what to do about the rest?  There were more lurid pictures in the Mail yesterday. 

 

The flat-earthers might recruit the Chief Inspector of Sausages? Why not? They make a meal of everything else...

 

All LaLite can do is to work something into the NHS Contract. Delivered by the Carbuncle this is an annual agreement that should have a strategic intent but is turning into a shopping list of stuff. It is annualised so we'll have to wait until later this year to see how they are going to make meals tasty, well presented and relevant to the patient. LaLite has pulled the only lever he has but it is a long lever with a distant fulcrum. He is a year away from changing anything.

 

I have had the pleasure of presenting NHS catering conferences and seen the fabulous kit available to create excellent meals. I know the lengths Trusts go to, to source local produce and deliver excellent meals, 24-7, for next to flumpence. NHS catering teams win national awards for their work.

 

How do we make the best the norm?

 

Hospital chief executives and boards should, every day, have meal on a ward with a patient. Why wouldn't they? The staff canteen may serve the same food but a lot can happen to fisherman's pie as it is trundled around the estate. NEDs should do the same. Turn up and dig in. If it's good... go to the kitchens and say so. If it's bad take the plate to the catering manager and make them eat it.

 

Steve Jobs and Jack Dorsey?  We know about horrible food because of them and things get changed because of them; respectively, the inventor of the iPhone and Twitter. Take an iPicture of lonely meat balls drowning in something brown and share the epicurean delight with millions on Twitter.

 

People power, social media and the crowd in the cloud will bypass powerless LaLite, waiting a year to change anything. Like Houdini; he has tied himself up in bureaucratic knots... unlike Houdini, he can't escape.

 

FaceBook can make us face uncomfortable facts and Twitter will give us the jitters. Forget complaints procedures, clunky ratings, websites, lists and rankings. I'm not interested in any of that and I am no different to any other bystander and patient. No one is interested. We just want stuff sorted... now. Not in the 'Contract' next year.

 

NHS politico-management is stuck in the 80's. Pac-Man when the rest of the world is X-Box. It lives where Billy Joel is still thin and wonders who shot JR.

 

Every Trust should have a Twitter account and hashtag; #SomeplaceTrust   

 

Plaster it around the hospital and say 'Help-us By Telling-us'. Take a picture of inedible meals and dirty bogs put 'em on Twitter... we want to know.  

 

If you can't eat it Tweet it!   

 

Then do like hight status brand companies and others do; employ a social media feed-back doyen to monitor the # and get things fixed in real time.

 

Maybe we should start a new # - #WhatsLaLite4?

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  Contact Roy - please use this e-address

roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net 

Know something I don't - email me in confidence.

Leaving the NHS, changing jobs - you don't have to say goodbye to us! You can update your Email Address from the link you'll find right at the bottom of the page, and we'll keep mailing.

MaM Logo
Medicine for Managers
Dr Paul Lambden
Gonorrhoea
'... give him the clap he deserves...'
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News and Stuff
News boy
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WantedWhere's Jeremy
Has any one seen this person? 
He is the Secretary of State for Health?
It's just that there is a patient in Spain that would like a bit of help. 
In case you missed it his name is Ashya King .  You can't miss his Mum and Dad, they are the ones in the handcuffs.
#WhatsLaLite4?
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Scottish independence: are you with us or against us?
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Health Chat
Cathy Warwick
CEO Royal College of Midwives
What is safe midwifery
Do we have enough midwives
How will midwifery evolve and improve?
Kings Fund - 27th November - 6pm �39.95
Tickets and More Details here
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Health-Chat
CNO England 
Jane Cummings
in conversation with
Roy Lilley
10th November
5.30pm
King's Fund
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Gossip
shh
This is what I'm hearing;
if you know different,
tell me here
>>  Congratulations to St Helens&Knowlsey - highest scoring Trust in the PLACE results.  I might have already posted this; can't remember but you can't have too much of the good thing.  Well done everyone.  
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>>  UKIP +30 points ahead of the conservatives - Clacton.
>>  Skin cancer - admissions leap.
>>  Half of young women unable to locate - virgina.
>>  Indy Scots - threatens porous boarder.
>>  King's Fund annual conference - It's �390 for a ticket and the speakers are all the usual suspects. Three women, eight blokes, blah, blah.  It's the same day as Apps World at Excel and the Bath Mozart Fest.  Your call.
>>  NHS Reinstatement Bill - Allyson Pollock et-al have been busy.
>>  Are private hospitals safe - er, well, maybe but then again, probably not. However, I can't see the CQC putting any of them in special measures unless they have an NHS contract.
>>  MP challenges car parking - she just doesn't seem to understand there isn't much the Minister can do.
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Today's Larf
with
Martin Shovel
cartoon martin