It was a Teams thing, inserted into a web-page. I could see sixteen people but there were apparently another 29 present.
Who? Dunno…
The whole thing was a bit of a love-fest. The outgoing chairman, David Prior was lauded and praised... he preened.
In fact everyone who spoke or said something was lauded and praised for doing a fantastic job, or had wonderful ideas or was altogether lovely and gorgeous.
In truth, everyone was pretty average with the exception of David Sloman, the COO, who gave the impression he was really on top of what was happening.
It was all going really well for him until he was caught out by a question on mental health.
He said it was very busy and would have to be the topic of a paper at the next meeting…
... that’s 60 days away, so I guess it will be a lot busier by then.
Andrew Morris asked the sort of questions that a practical, sleeves-rolled-up, ex-ChEx of a Trust would ask. Why he’s not running the show is a mystery.
He’d be too much of a handful for the politicians is my guess.
The star of the show isn’t on the Board, he was a guest. Jim Mackey, leading the recovery programme told it like it is… difficult and don’t expect too much any time soon.
The Board looked glum.
Ian Dodge, (don't know what he does), took to texting. His turn came and he gave an update on the passage of the Health Bill.
Waste of time. They could have read it for themselves in the Telegraph. He resumed texting… have a look. Blatant insouciance, doncha-think?
Julian Kelly is the finance man and he dropped a bombshell;
‘…Government had asked the NHS to ‘cut core funding’ by £500m…’
The HSJ, who must have been watching, were on it like a ton-of-bricks and did a news flash. None of the Board batted an eyelid. No one said; ‘yer ‘avin a larf’, or ‘not on your nellie’.
Not even the incoming chair Richard Meddings, who will have to pick up the pieces.
I noticed when he is thinking (or bored) he scratches his left ear. He never touched his ear… I guess he’ll learn.
Next up, Tim Ferriss who is the… well, I’m not sure what he does. I thought it was digital or technology but it turns out he does life sciences and innovation.
He read from an interminable script about a paper, I think he'd written, that none of the unwashed, like me, could see.
He introduced speakers who spoke about obvious stuff about innovation stuff.
Not the stuff for a Board meeting, more an away-day or briefing.
One of the contributors Peter Johnson, got enthused about the pill-cam, that I first saw in Israel 20 years ago.
Keep up Peter...
Julian Kelly gave up and started fiddling with something, have a look, don’t know what he was doing. But he might go blind… you be the judge.
Meddings scratched his ear, look out...
... he demonstrated he is the master of asking a short question, long. Very looooooong. In terms ‘Why can’t we get the NHS to use all this good stuff?’
John Bell, regis-prof from Oxford, the Canadian, you see on the telly, said, in terms, it’s because, 'the NHS is fragmented and no one is in charge’.
Jane Raine, boss of the MHRA, somehow popped up. She said they were speeding everything up, ‘using real world evidence.’ What other kind of evidence is there?
David Behan lost the will to live and set about playing the piano, or maybe the keyboard of an adjacent computer. See what you think.
That was about it.
More love for the outgoing chair, nothing on the workforce crisis, everyone was fabulous.
Running the NHS with 60% more beds occupied with covid patients, staff infection rates exploding, no guidance for them on the testing changes in April and £500m less next year, doesn’t seem to phase anyone.
It’s all very lovely. Move along, nothing to see here.
>> I'm hearing - GPs are saying; Chancellor Rishi Sunak has failed to address pension tax rules that are undermining the NHS workforce and ignored calls for funding to tackle the care backlog in a 'deeply disappointing' spring statement. I guess it was predictable.
>> I'm hearing - Chris Whitty is warning Covid variants, worse than Omicron are likely to hit UK with seasonal peaks for the next 2-3 years.
