Ensuring our NHS is better managed

I RECENTLY presented a legislative proposal to the Senedd strengthening accountability in the Welsh NHS.

It has been a habit among politicians in Wales sometimes to say “We have too many managers in the NHS; they’re not doing their jobs properly.”

I’ve probably been guilty of that in the past, but the truth is that we will not deliver the kinds of services our constituents want and need unless we have a service that is effectively managed.

We have many excellent managers working at all levels in our NHS in Wales.

But there can also be no doubting the widelyshared concerns about capacity, competence and certainly consistency of performance in the management of our services. And there are very valid concerns about accountability. So, this is why I proposed a bill on health service management.

The purpose of the bill would be to establish a professional body for NHS managers in Wales.

What it would do is acknowledge the huge importance of managers to the effectiveness of the service and, if we gave them a proper professional body that registered them, would put their contribution on a par with their clinical colleagues.

This professional body could set core professional competencies for people in management and administration at all levels, it could require continuous professional development, and it would be about ensuring that everybody else knows what can be expected from people managing at different levels in our service.

Of course, one other aspect of this registration would be that, if a manager persistently failed, or if a manager was having trouble doing their job, their professional body would, as it would with a nurse or a doctor, step in and prescribe advice, prescribe training, prescribe support. But if that was not successful, in the end this professional body would have the right to strike a manager off and say “You are not a fit and proper person to undertake the management of our service”.

That is not the main function of the legislation I’m proposing, but it is a sanction that would end a pattern we’ve seen of persons in senior roles failing to manage services effectively, disappearing for a while and then popping up somewhere else managing another aspect of the service and not doing it well. That is totally unfair.

Plaid Cymru would also see this legislation properly establishing the independence of Healthcare Inspectorate Wales. My proposed legislation would also place a duty of candour not just on organisations, but on individuals.

We also need a robust, consistent, transparent complaints system that is truly independent and trusted for patients and we need to look again at how successful our whistleblowing policies are.

The Welsh Government’s Health and Social Care bill currently going through the scrutiny process does not address any of the concerns we’ve seen highlighted in recent years by scandals such as the maternity services in Cwm Taf. It is a weak bill that does very little to improve services. Our NHS management bill is Plaid Cymru’s alternative.

Although the vote was not binding in the chamber, I was encouraged to see it pass, with a few backbench labour AMs voting against their party to support it. I will thus explore on a cross-party basis how the proposals can be taken forward to ensure we have the best, most transparent management system our NHS needs and deserves.

■ Helen Mary Jones AM is Plaid Cymru’s health spokeswoman