UK, Ireland /
hospitals in the uk [34]
It all stems from the Conservative Government in the eighties and the creation of the internal market within the NHS. The Labour government compounded this with the introduction of PFI ( private finance initiative ).
Exactly!!
And they have to keep going out to cheapest private tender as well.
I work in Government office, not the same as a hospital I know, but our purse strings are tied by the same Treasury....every year we have to go out to tender and take the cheapest.....we end up with a cowboy firm employing a minimum number of people to clean an entire office block in a minimum amount of time...the same thing is happening in hospitals....our cleaners went on strike recently, because of their intolerable work load
As long as Mrs Smith gets her hip replacement in under the target time, it doesn't matter that she has to sleep in a dirty ward and there aren't enough nurses to care for her properly..the hospital manager has already met another target by reducing the cleaning budget