Tom Richmond: NHS needs to heal waste and bureaucracy

If there is any organisation in the country which has become a byword for inefficiency, it is the National Health Service. And, far from jeopardising healthcare, some sounder management – and fewer frontline staff – could actually improve services.

It is clear that savings can be made. Prior to the Budget, Leeds Partnerships NHS Foundation Trust, which runs mental health and learning disability services across the city, announced proposals to shed 300 staff. This is in addition to the 700 posts that will be lost at the main hospitals in Leeds.

They clearly believe that savings can be made. And it is a mantra that Cameron should accept.

I have to go to St James's Hospital in Leeds every two months to have corrective treatment on my right eye.

I get two – not one – appointment letters.

When I turn up at reception, my notes are put in a basket – until a person in uniform picks them up and moves them to another pile five yards away.

Last month, two other nurses picked up the notes, and read them, before leaving them. Shortly afterwards, another assistant picked them up and asked me to have a brief eye test.

No problem here – accept that, in the best part of three years, no

doctor has ever discussed the results of the eye test with me, or queried whether my sight is deteriorating or not. "I don't know," says the nurse. "We just do the tests because we do." To me, this sums up the NHS – an organisation reluctant to challenge accepted practices.

She then takes the notes and leaves them in another pile.

That pile of notes is then shuffled, and examined, by three other staff – all different from those in the reception area – before I see the doctor, a locum, for five minutes. Job done.

In short, eight people handled my patient file before I saw the doctor. Just imagine if every department at every hospital in every city has a similarly inefficient rigmarole.

And then, on the way back to work, I switch on the radio news and hear Cameron arguing, yet again, that the NHS is exempt from the cuts while other departments face savings worth in excess of 25 per cent.

He's wrong – and it's high time that the Health Service was dragged, screaming and kicking, into the 21st century.

WHILE some ex-Labour ministers are struggling to come to terms with

life in opposition, Education Secretary Michael Gove is having difficulty with the work of government.

I see that Gove has been admonished by John Bercow, the Speaker, for posing questions to his opposite number Ed Balls, the Morley and Outwood MP.

"It would be wrong to give people the impression that the shadow Secretary of State has a right to come back to the Dispatch Box during this exchange," said Bercow during a statement on Gove's proposed

"free schools".

Yet, when it came to answering a point raised by Brigg and Goole MP Andrew Percy, Gove had to make a concession on his flagship policy – self-governing schools will have to abide by the same rules on admissions when it comes to problem pupils.

This is reassuring, but just how "free" will the new academies be?

TALK about looking after number one.

Our dear MPs – you will be pleased to learn – will have to pay more for food and drink in the House of Commons, after Parliamentary authorities announced they were slashing 12m from this year's budget.

Here's the downside. Even though the savings are nearly five per cent more than previously planned for 2010/11, they will reduce the budget for running the Commons to a mere 219m.

One point. Why is Commons catering seemingly exempt from the 25 per cent cuts that most Whitehall spending departments are being expected to implement?

NEXT Tuesday is the fifth anniversary of London winning the right to stage the 2012 Olympics – and Sheffield-raised Seb Coe promising that the whole country would benefit from the Games.

So far, this has amounted to little more than the English regions signing a cheque to pay for all the new facilities, and infrastructure improvements, that are now taking place in London.

Yet there's a possibility – albeit a small one – that the new

Government intends to resolve the legacy issue. In response to a

question from former Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell, I was encouraged by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's assertion that he was "thinking particularly of the creation of a sporting legacy in schools throughout the country".

He's right. Schools are the places to inspire a new generation of competitors, or to encourage less sports-minded children to embrace the merits of healthy living.

We don't need any more thoughts from the Minister, however – just

action.