£500m surplus at NHS

The NHS is expected to announce an under-spend of nearly half a billion pounds.  This has, of course, upset the unions, who say that staff and patients have been treated so badly and yet there is £500m lying about.  To me it is just another example of how badly managed the NHS really is.  How can they have miscalculated £500m spend?  But even more worryingly, how can the government justify spend many billions of pounds upgrade system and the botched online recruitment system, yet still have so much money going unspent?  Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that the government should spend the money for the sake of it, but there have been serious cut backs, job losses and poor patient care which is clearly where the money would be better spent than on failed IT projects.  This just proves that the NHS is wasting money and all their headline figures on record investment mean nothing - because they are not investing it wisely and have their priorities all wrong.  For the sole reason of balancing the books, hitting their targets and getting the headlines they have not spent the money where it is most needed.

Sam Everington, the acting chairman of the British Medical Association, blamed the government's obsession with targets.  He stated" -If these figures are right, we know that some trusts must have unnecessarily cut back on services to patients such as reducing operating lists and clinics, closing wards, cutting education and training budgets, and making staff redundant-."  This government, nor the many before it, has no idea how to run the third largest organisation in the world.  It is a catalogue of mismanagement story are financial waste story.  Its priorities are wrong and employees and patients are both suffering.